BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
91 
the summer at home. But the most of their fellows still follow the path 
which their ancestors have so long trodden. 
While some follow the stretch of country between our two great 
western mountain systems, and breed in Washington Territory and the 
country to the northward, others forsake their winter-quarters, and travel 
in a northeasterly direction to the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador. 
A few, however, lag behind and find suitable summer resorts in the pine 
forests and Thuja swamps of New Hampshire and Maine. When our 
mountain regions and dense forests are better known, we hazard the 
opinion that many will he found to breed nearer home than we are 
aware. Paired individuals have often been met with along the hills of 
the Wissahickon, in Pennsylvania, during the breeding-season, which evi- 
dently had nests, but diligent search failed to reveal the fact. 
Before the discovery of the nest of this species, the presumption was 
that it built a pensile nest, not unlike the European congener, and that 
it laid small eggs faintly sprinkled with buff-colored dots on a white 
background, but differing little in size from those of the common Hum- 
ming-bird. It was also inferred that two broods were annually raised, 
from the fact that so much time was s^jent in its summer abode, and also 
because full-fledged young were found by Mr. Nuttall in May, on the 
Columbia, and in August, by Mr. Audubon, in Labrador. 
According to Mr. J. K. Lord, who discovered this species to be very 
common in V ancouver’s Island, and also along the entire boundary-line of 
AVashington Territory and British Columbia, Avhere it sometimes reaches 
an elevation of six thousand feet, it constructs a pensile nest, which it 
suspends from the extreme end of a pine-branch ; and that it lays from 
five to seven eggs. The materials of the nest, and the color and dimen- 
sions of the eggs, were never described. 
The world remained in ignorance of these matters until the summer 
of 187d, when Mr. H. L). Minot discovered, on the sixteenth day of July, 
a nest of this species. It was built in a . forest of the AVhite Mountains, 
