298 
NESTS AND EGGS OE 
most perfect silence is maintained, and the builder always leaves in the 
direction opposite to that by which he entered. The routine was so 
closely followed by Evermann, that he could generally guess with tolerable 
accuracy what movements were in contemplation. 
We are told that from five to eight days are required for the com- 
pletion of the domicile, and that laying commences on the day succeed- 
ing this event, one egg being laid daily until the full nest-complement 
is reached. By the fifteenth of May the birds are ready for incubation, 
although in some cases this business is entered into by the fourth, and 
occasionally not until the nineteenth of the month. 
Bespecting the number of eggs laid, Mr. Evermann finds that three is ■ 
the usual number, although up to the time of his observations, it was the 
opinion of ornithologists that the birds deposited but two. Seven nests 
were secured by this collector, in the vicinity of Santa Paula, Cal., and 
all excepting one were found to contain three eggs, and this had but two. 
Dr. Cooper gives but two as the ordinary complement, and he is the first 
individual who called attention to the nest of the species. This structure 
was found near Fort Mojave, on the Colorado, on the twenty-fifth of A|3ril, 
and was placed in a mezquite branch at a height of twelve feet from the 
ground. No further particulars were given of this find, until Dr. Brewer 
described it in the first volume of the “History of North American Birds.” 
Substantially, he says the nest was a very flat affair, four inches in exter- 
nal diameter, not two in height, and with a depth of cavity of less than 
an inch. It was composed almost wholly of flax-like flbres, fine grasses, 
plant-stems, and stalks of larger size, variously interwoven, and lined with 
a soft downy material of vegetable character. 
This notice of Dr. Cooper’s nest, though probably authentic, is thought 
by Coues not free from suspicion. The material of Captain Bendire, which 
may be found described in the Proceedings of the Natural History Society 
of Boston, though ascribed by Brewer to Townsend’s Flycatcher, unques- 
tionably belongs to the Black-crested, for the nest and eggs of the former 
