THE ©, & ©. SEMI-ANNUAE. 9 
SOMESHINTS ON FINDING NESTS. 
BY C. S. BRIMLEY, RALEIGH, N. C. 
Taking our various species in somewhat the order they nest, I 
will begin with the birds that dig holes in wood. 
The Brown-headed Nuthatch and Carolina Chickadee need to 
be looked after when ‘“‘digging,” and the way to find the nests is 
to listen for the sound of the bird’s bill on the wood, as he chisels 
off chips from the inside of the cavity. Nuthatches especially 
need to be locatad when digging, as they take very little time lin- 
ing the cavity. Chickadees, however, may often be located by 
watching the bird collect nesting materials. The chief difficulty 
here is that the Chickadee frequently gets his material at some dis- 
from the nest. 
Pine Warblers must be located when building. The singing 
male will usually have his wife somewhere near by, and if she is 
building, she usually betrays the fact by a more restless and pre- 
occupied air than when she is merely searching the pine trees for 
worms and insects. Here, again, one must pay particular atten- 
tion to any female seen taking a long, straight flight into a tree ; 
a bird usually has a more direct, business-like way of flying when 
carrying material to its nest then when merely flitting from tree 
to tree. ; 
The Tufted Tit must also be watched when building, and he 
needs a great deal of watching, as he, like his small cousin, gets 
his building material from a long way off; but he makes up for 
that in a measure by carrying a good big bunch of stuff in his 
mouth ; enough to make his building operations a tolerably evi- 
dent fact to all that see him and are ready to profit by observation. 
Louisiana Water Thrushes’ nests must be found by a careful 
exploration of the small streams they build in. 
Blue-gray Gnat-catchers’ are most easily found by watching the 
bird building ; when a nest is found, however, it is not by any 
means always takeable. 
Whip-poor-wills’ eggs are found by a careful search of the lo- 
calities they frequent, and then if you go at the right time and 
flush the bird, you generally get a set. 
