398 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 



species reaches the Saskatchewan about the beginning of May 

 and does not pass beyond Lat. 57°. It associates itself with the 

 other blackbirds and does great injury to sprouting grain. 

 {Richardson.) North to Fort Simpson, on the Mackenzie River ; 

 common. {Ross.) 



Breeding Notes. — June nth, 1882 : Went in the morning with 

 two brothers to the lake in the sand-hills east of De Winton; saw 

 there large numbers of marsh terns and various kinds of black- 

 birds. I was unable, from the depth of the water, to reach the 

 place where the terns seemed to be nesting, but found the nest of 

 the red-winged blackbird in a few twigs that projected about a 

 foot above the water, here three feet deep, and some ten feet 

 from the shore. I saw the female leave the nest, so that the 

 identification is good. The male did not put in an appearance at 

 all. The nest is very deep, neat and strong; it is suspended from 

 about a dozen upright twigs and is built much like that of a Bal- 

 timore oriole, but entirely of grass. The eggs, four in number, 

 were all fresh; one was i by \\, pale blue, and scrawled over with 

 most curious hieroglyphics in brown-black ink; the others were 

 similar. {Thompson-Seton.) Builds in bushes and low trees 

 around Ottawa, Ont. Its nest is composed of coarse, fibrous 

 material, strips of rushes and marsh grass ; lined with fine grass. 

 Eggs, four to six. Pale blue, dotted, blotched and scrawled with 

 blackish-brown. {G.R.White.) Breeding abundantly in all pools 

 throughout eastern Assiniboia, but becoming scarcer to the west. 

 They always bred in communities. At Brandon, Man., nests 

 were found in willows {Salix longifolid) and at Crane Lake the 

 same species was nesting in Scripus lacustris orbullrushes. In 1895 

 the same species was breeding in a thick growth of snowberry 

 {SymphoricarpHS occidentalii) on dry ground, at the forks of Old 

 Wives' Creek, Assa. Nest of leaves and stems of grasses, lined . 

 with the dried stems of Eleocharis palustris. At 12-Mile Lake, 

 near Wood Mountain, Assa., they were nesting in cat-tails, and 

 at Sucker Creek, south of the Cypress Hills in an old growth of 

 Carex aristata. {Macoun.) On June i8th, 1892, at Indian Head, 

 Assa., I waded out into a large slough that had a lot of rushes, 

 {Scirpus lacustris) growing in it' near the middle. In a few minutes I 

 saw ten nests. Three of them had young, half-grown, and others 

 young just hatched. Two nests with four eggs each I' took. This 

 was. at 9 a.m., and at 8 p.m. I prepared to blow the eggs. On 



