96 THE NIDOLOGIST 
lowed shelf to the bare wall pretty well up 
toward the roof. Two such nests I took 
this season and heard of others similarly 
situated, but I have yet to see one of these 
birds issue from a chimney. The advantage 
of a good, clean wall, under cover, over a 
dirty, open chimney would seem to be great. 
After all, the choice of the former seems to 
be forced, and doubtless—later on when 
our chimneys get plenty and more roomy 
we shall have to take oursets, as I did in 
early youth, by means of a long stick with 
a wad of cotton tied upon one end and dip- 
ped in glue! But—de gustebus, etc. 
June 22 last summer, while driving 
across the open level prairie I was amazed 
to see numbers of Bank Swallows apparently 
issuing from the solid ground a few rods 
from the wagon trail. On approaching the 
spot a great company of these graceful birds 
arose from the mouth of an abandoned dry 
well about fifteen feet deep, the perpendicu- 
lar clay walls of which were honey-combed 
with nesting holes, and from which next 
day with the aid of ladder and spade I took 
a fine set of 7 fresh eggs as a souvenir of 
this unusual nesting situation. Hitherto I 
had noted only an occasional bird of this 
species and had hardly thought of them as 
breeders here, as a conventional ‘‘bank,”’ 
such as this Swallow ordinarily requires— 
is hardly to be looked for hereabouts. 
But the nesting of the Kingbird (7. 
tyrannus), one of the most abundant of 
our birds, indicates here, habitually, a 
radical departure from that ordinarily attrib- 
uted to this species and surely different 
from the way it used to nest ‘‘when I. was 
a boy’’ in Wisconsin. ‘There [had to climb 
for my nests; here I oftener stoop. 
Dotting the prairie in every direction are 
small clumps of gveasewood (in common 
parlance) a low shrub from one to three feet 
in height; and in the latter part of June 
pretty nearly every clump holds its pair of 
Kingbirds and their nests. Once this 
season while searching these bits of brush 
for the nest of the Clay-colored Sparrow I 
flushed a female Kingbird from his nest six 
inches from the ground, set between three 
upright slender shoots of this insignificant 
shrub, this being the nearest approach to 
nesting on the ground within my observa- 
tion. Again I found the nest and four eggs 
of this species in the tool box ofa sulky 
plow left standing in a level field a mile 
from any human habitation and far from 
timber. Later a nest was shown me built 
in the twine box ofa “binder’”’ standing 
alone and far removed from any other con- 
spicuous object. 
Early in June last a vigorous pair of 
Kingbirds, after much cautiousinvestigation, 
finally chose for a nesting site the high end 
of the galvanized iron gutter, running just: 
under the eaves along the East side of our 
kitchen and about a dozen feet from our 
bedroom window. We spent much time 
at this window watching their leisurely and 
somewhat desultory labor as they undertook 
to shape the nest to the slippery, rounding 
bottom of the gutter and anchor it firmly. 
Possibly we inspected them too closely, for 
one day after a more extensive ‘‘lay off” 
than usual they deliberately pulled the half 
completed nest to pieces and transported all 
the material to the /ow end of the same kind 
of gutter on the main part of the house, but 
completely out of sight of the window. 
This time the nest was saddled squarely on 
the opening into the escape pipe running 
to the cistern. Rain fell in torrents at times 
while they were building in this second 
situation and the gutter fairly overflowed; 
but, nothing daunted, the work of the pair 
proceeded until one night a heavy wind 
scooped the mass of twine, rags, flax fiber 
and other material completely out of the 
gutter and lodged it in a tangled matin the 
wire fence surrounding the yard. We did 
not discover that this untoward circum- 
stance dampened the ardor of the birds, for 
soon after breakfast we observed them hard 
at work extracting material from the mass 
in the wire fence and adjusting it toa new 
spot in the low end of the gutter on the 
west side of the kitchen and squarely over 
another escape pipe running to the cistern. 
‘This time they were successful in complet- 
ing a first class nest and in due time the 
female deposited therein a ‘‘first class set” 
of % Tyrannus tyrannus (according to 
the style of nomenclature which Dr. Coues 
abhors withsome reason) and I suppose ske 
was really entitled to proceed with the work 
of incubation undisturbed, but the fact is 
we use our cistern water for drinking and 
cooking and hardly relished the idea of a 
nest for a filter, so with much reluctance 
and explanation to the children in justifica- 
tion of the dire necessity, I ‘‘collected’’ this 
interesting nest and set. 
The season was now well advanced into 
July and this pair might surely have been 
excused from further family duty until 
another year, but the instinct proved too 
