PAINTED BUNTING. 225 



keeps at a distance. When the young are full grown, he troubles himself no more about 

 them. The middle of August he leaves wife and family and goes south to his winter 

 home, The female and young remain until the second week in October." 



This agrees fully with my own observations, except in regard to the migration of 

 the males, w^hich I have seen as late as October 1. 



I have found the nests in very different localities. In Louisiana they are often 

 built in orange trees, while in Texas they were frequently situated in peach trees, in 

 post-oaks, blackberry bushes, and in Cherokee roses. While writing these lines twelve 

 nests, which I found near the West Yegua, are before me. Eight of them were built in 

 horizontal branches, some in a half pendulous way, and the rest in upright crotches. 

 They are all small, compactly built structures, more or less similar to each other. Only 

 a few diversify regarding the material. Externally they are largely made of the soft, 

 wooly, whitish plant I have often alluded to in this work, of snake-skin, old leaves, 

 bark-strips, fine slender grasses. Near dwellings pieces of paper, rags, cotton, twine, 

 etc., enter into the composition. All these materials are mixed with spiders' and cater- 

 pillars' webs and with these the nest is also fastened to the branches. The interior is 

 lined with fine brown rootlets, and generally with hair. A very peculiar nest, consisting 

 almost entirely of pure white goose feathers, mixed with several long hairs, a few shreds 

 of plant-stems and spider-webs, was found late in July in an upright crotch of a peach 

 tree. The lining of the cavity consisted of plant fibres and horse hair. Another pecuUar 

 nest was built of the entire skin of a moccasin or copperhead snake arranged in a 

 turban-like manner, and within this the nest proper was formed, made of bark-strips, 

 rootlets, and fine grasses. Near the abodes of man the foundation of the nest usually 

 consists of paper. All the domiciles are usually so well hidden among the green foliage 

 that they are not easily discovered. In south-eastern Texas usually two broods are raised 

 ?inriually. Nests of the second brood are often more carelessly built than those of the 

 first brood. The eggs, three to five, but generally four in number, are dull pearly-white 

 or bluish-white, speckled and blotched with reddish-brown, especially at the larger end. 



The young are almost entirely fed with plant-lice, small eater-pillars, moths, and 

 other insects found on trees and shrubs, and insects in all conditions of life form the 

 main diet of the old Nonpareils. Later in the season poke-berries, elder-berries, figs, etc., 

 are also eaten to some extent. In autumn and winter they subsist largely on all kinds 

 of small seeds, which they gather from the ground as well as from weed-stalks. 



The winter home of the Nonpareil is found in Central America. Mr. Erich Witt- 

 kugel informs me that they are very common in the gardens of S^n Pedro Sula, Hon- 

 duras, from November to March, and, according to Dr. J. Gundlach, they are a,bundant 

 winter visitors in Cuba. — At their arrival in spring they are caught in great numbers 

 near New Orleans and sold to northern and European bird dealers. Yieillot informs 

 us that already in his time they were numerously imported to France and that they 

 successfully bred in confi|iement. In Germany, where these birds have often raised broods, 

 it was observed that the young males attain their beautiful color in the third year. In 

 the second year sometimes only a few feathers denote the sex of the birds. My caged 

 males usually lost the beautiful red of the underside, which was substituted by a yellow- 

 ish color, and the metallic green also lost much of its lustre. It is, in fact, difficult to 



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