THE OOLOGIST 



169 



tible, broken net-work of an extremely 

 fine vegetable wool of a tan color, 

 which has been applied with extreme 

 skill and neatness, and with the evi- 

 dent purpose of keeping the aforesaid 

 white bits in their respective places. 

 As a matter of fact, both may have 

 been gathered from the same brush or 

 plant, and I am inclined to believe 

 that they were. 



Mr. A. M. Tngersoll collected this 

 nest at Cuyamaca, San Diego County, 

 California, on May 31, 1908; he also 

 took with it the four fresh eggs that 

 had been laid by the bird. It was 

 about seven feet up; and when he vis- 

 ited it, four days before collecting the 

 specimen, it contained two eggs, and 

 the bird was singing on the rim of the 

 nest. (Set mark, 2163). 



The eggs are pure white, and meas- 

 ure on the average 2x1.5 cms. Each 

 is sparsely speckled with extremely 

 fine little specks of a rusty brown 

 color, chiefly about the larger end 

 (Fig. 2.); in fact, there are no specks 

 at the apical moiety of any one of 

 them. 



Another very remarkable nest of 

 this collection is a fine one of the 

 Black-tailed Gnatcatcher (Polioptila 

 californica), here shown, with the set 

 of the four eggs it contained, in Figs. 

 3 and 4. This specimen was likewise 

 collected by Mr. A. M. Ingersoll, In 

 San Diego County, California, April 

 12, 1892. Its label states (Set mark, 

 1643) that the nest was in a white 

 sage on a bushy hillside. The female 

 was very tame, and allowed the col- 

 lector to touch her several times be- 

 fore she flew off the eggs. 



In its general form, this nest is of 

 an elongo-pear-shaped form, snugly set 

 in between the branching twigs of the 

 bush in which it was built, having a 

 moderate incline toward the centre of 

 it. It has a length of nearly 10.5 cms., 

 while its circular entrance has a di- 



ameter of but 3.5 cms., the rim being 

 about a centimeter thick all around. 

 There is a very slight contraction of 

 the latter toward the center, while the 

 depth of the concavity is a])out 3.5 

 cms. 



The general color of this nest is 

 stone-gray, it being composed of 

 densely woven, fine plant fibres, witli 

 whitish, young, shriveled leaves and 

 bud-sheaths thickly covering its ex- 

 ternal surface, particularly the lower 

 half of the structure. 



The four ovate eggs average 1.5x1.2 

 cms., and are of a pale blue color, fine- 

 ly speckled with minute specks of tan. 

 In two of them the specks are larger 

 at the butt, near which they form a 

 circlet, a character bnt very faintly 

 seen in the other two. They surely 

 are very small eggs to build such an 

 elaborate nest for; but then, there are 

 wide differences in such matters 

 among birds. 



Shufeldt's Junco (Junco hyemalis 

 connectens builds a nest closely re- 

 sembling other members of the genus 

 (Fig. 5.) The specimen in Mr. Court's 

 collection was taken, with its five 

 eggs, by Mr. J. H. Bowles, June 30, 

 1912, at Spanaway, Pierce County, 

 Washington, it having been found in 

 a dry prairie country with scattered 

 fir and oak. In places, these were dis- 

 tributed in small clumps, as it was 

 at the edge of one of these, on the 

 ground, at the foot of a fir four feet 

 high, that the bird had selected as 

 the site for its nest. The female was 

 flushed from the nest by Mr. Bowles 

 having brushed against the tree, and 

 she at once became very demonstra- 

 tive, remaining in the near vicinity of 

 the spot. For some reason or other 

 the male bird did not put in an appear- 

 ance. 



This nest is composed entirely of 

 fine, dry grasses, woven together in a 

 most compact and intricate manner. 



