Nest Life of the Catbird 185 



presence and used the guy ropes as perches. The blind was 

 placed very close to nest B and may have had more effect on 

 the parents for that reason. At any rate they became more 

 timid and shy each day and finally deserted the nest. At 

 nest C the female scarcely paid any attention to the blind 

 while it was being erected or afterwards. Persons could pass 

 in and out at any time and conversation in loud tones could 

 be carried on in the blind without disturbing her in the least. 

 She would hardly leave the nest long enough for us to mark 

 the young and then generally sat a few feet away and 

 watched proceedings without making any fuss. At one time 

 during the study a platform was built inside the blind to 

 level the floor. The sawing and hammering necessary to do 

 this did not cause her to leave the nest. The male apparently 

 paid little attention to it as he hunted right up to the edge 

 and many times sat on the bushes within two or three feet 

 of it while singing. 



In this connection, I recently received some interesting 

 notes from Mr. Harry C. Bigglestone regarding an attempt 

 to study a catbird nest in 1912, and with his permission I 

 will introduce them here. " * * * From my observations, the 

 old birds would not feed when any one was in the blind. 

 They would remain in the vicinity and call but would not 

 approach the nest. I would sit in the corner out of sight of 

 the nest and watch closely but never saw the old bird feed- 

 ing. The young at times became nearly frozen and starved 

 to death, so I would leave and sit in a path forty or fifty feet 

 from the nest watching from there. The old birds soon 

 started feeding but stopped again as soon as the blind was 

 entered. This was repeated several times and always with 

 the same results. After attempting observations for two days 

 and the plan of staying even at intervals thruout the day had 

 proven unsuccessful, the blind was removed." These in- 

 stances show the amount of individual variation noted in the 

 different pairs. 



Nest C seemed to be quite a curiosity to the birds of the 

 vicinity judging by the number of visitors it had. A king- 



