THE CALLIOPE HUMMIJSGBIED. 221 



for them, I bad no further difficuhy in finding their nests, and all of those 

 observed by me were built in exactly similar situations. I succeeded in obtain- 

 ing three sets of nearly fresh eggs, and found a number of other nests containing 

 young during the next few daj-s. They were usually placed on or against a 

 dry cone on small dead limbs of Pinus contorta, froin 8 to 15 feet from the 

 ground, and on account of the brittle nature of these limbs they were rather 

 hard to secure. The nests, while outwardly not as handsome as those of the 

 majority of our Hi;mmers, are nevertheless marvels of ingenuity, all those I have 

 seen mimicking a small dead pine cone so perfectly as to almost defy detection 

 unless one sees the bird fly on or off the nest. The majority found were sad- 

 dled on one or two such cones, or on a small limb and resting against the sides 

 of a cone. The outer walls are composed of bits of bark and small shreds of 

 cone, and the interior cup is softly lined with willow down. An average nest 

 measures about IJ inches in outer diameter by the same in depth; the inner cup 

 being three-quarters of an inch in width by one-half inch in depth. The nests 

 were generally so placed that the contents were protected by larger limbs or 

 green boughs above, and at distances varying from 5 to 12 feet from the 

 ground. One I found had a flattened cone projecting directly over it, resembling 

 an opened umbrella. While bushy pines seem to constitute their favorite nest- 

 ing sites in northern California and Oregon at least, they do not invariably con- 

 fine themselves to such trees. Mr. Shelly W. Denton took a nest of the Calliope 

 Hummer at Franktown, Washoe County, Nevada, which is now in Mr. William 

 Brewster's collection at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mr. Denton watched the bii'd 

 while building it. This is composed interiorly of fine moss and willow down, and 

 the outer walls are decorated with tiny shreds of bark, fine flakes of wood, and 

 flakes of whitewash, fastened securely with cobwebs ; it was placed on a knot in 

 a rope hanging from the roof of a woodshed and within 5 feet of an occupied 

 dwelling house. The materials out of which the nest is composed closely assim- 

 ilate the rope and knot on which it is placed. This nest contained two eggs on 

 June 8, 1887, these being deposited on alternate clays. The male was never 

 seen about the nest. The rope (one-third of an inch thick) hung down about 4 

 feet, so that every time the female settled on the rim of the nest while building 

 she caused it to swing back and forth like a pendulum. This specimen, which 1 

 have seen, does not resemble the nests taken by me very closely, and the Cal- 

 liope Hummer evidently attempts to mimic the immediate sun-oundings as nearly 

 as practicable. Mr. Walter E. Bryant records another, built upon a projecting 

 splinter of a woodpile, at a height of 5 feet.-^ 



The only eggs of this species in the United States National Museum col- 

 lection are those taken by the late Capt. John Feilner, United States Army, near 

 Pitt River, California, in June, 1859, and three sets collected by myself near Fort 

 Klamath, Oregon. They resemble the eggs of our better known Hummingbirds 

 in shape and color, but are smaller. 



'Bulletin of the California Academy of Sciences; 1887, p. 452. 



