90 PHAINOPEPLA. 
os ~ o_o 
The Phainopepla is a very beautiful and highly interesting bird. It is remarkable 
for its slender, active form, its long tail and conspicuous crest. It is light and graceful 
on the wing, and very often numbers of them are actively engaged in the pursuit of 
flying insects. In these evolutions the bright white spot on the wing, is in fine contrast 
with the glossy black of the general plumage. It seems to be found only on mountain 
sides, in wooded cafions, or in the timbered borders of wooded mountain streams, being 
a true mountain bird. Many observers have seen as many as forty and fifty together, 
acting very much in the same way as Cedarbirds do. Like these birds, they are very 
fond of all kinds of berries, especially the fruit of the mistletoe, which grows in abund- 
ance in the regions where they live; it also subsists largely on cedar berries. Although 
an expert and successful insect hunter, it seems to prefer berries of various kinds. At 
all times they are wild and timid, jutting their tails and erecting their crests whenever 
they are alarmed. 
In the “Auk,” Mr. W. E. D. Scott gives a very interesting account of the habits 
and nesting of these birds (Vol. II, 1885p. 242—246). This noted ornithologist found 
the Phainopepla in different parts of Arizona abundantly. North of Riverside, at a 
considerable altitude in a section known as the Mineral Creek District in the Pinal 
Mountains, he found the species an abundant one. From October till December he found 
that in certain localities—sheltered flats in broad cations, where there was a heavy 
growth of a kind of juniper, ‘then laden with fruit,—the birds were abundant, often 
gathering in flocks of fifty or more, and reminding one of the common Cedarbird. All 
the time they, adults and young birds, male and female, were calling to each other in 
a peculiar, bell-like, whistling note that was very musical. Mr. Scott describes six nests 
which he found there. They were all built rather high, in large trees. Three were 
built ten feet from the ground, one twenty, one twenty-five, and one even forty feet 
high. I will quote here only the description of the first nest he found: ‘June 17, 1884. 
Built in an oak, twenty-five feet from the ground. Contained three fresh eggs. It was 
saddled on a thick limb near where it forked, and about ten feet from the main stem of 
the tree. It is composed mainly of the stems of a soft flowering weed abundant here- 
about, and the flowers, which are worked into and form a part of the structure. Also 
some strips of fine bark, and various dried grasses, small twigs, and much plant down, 
help to make up the walls and bottom. These are thick and very soft, and the 
materials composing them are not woven at all, but simply laid together with some 
little attempt as fastening them with thread-like grasses. Externally the nest is 2 inches 
deep, and the external diameter is a little less than,4 inches. The greatest depth inside 
is 1 inch, and the diameter of the interior at the rim of the nest is 2.75 inches. It is 
not at all an elegant structure, though peculiar, and is very fragile, being quite as 
delicate and soft as that of Trochilus alexandri. The three eggs are greenish-white in 
ground-color, but so completely flecked all over with faint lilac spots as to seem at a 
very short distance of that general color. Again, all over the lilac spotting, are very 
strongly defined spots of deep umber brown, almost black.” 
Capt. Charles Bendire, who discovered more than a dozen nests with eggs and 
young in Arizona, never found more than two eggs in a nest. Other ornithologists 
and collectors found quite as frequently three. 
