30 



THE COLLECTORS' MONTHLY 



collected in Woods Holl, Mass., are 

 respectively 1 x .75 in., 1 x.82 in., .96x 

 .75 in., 1 .16x.82 in., lx.80 in., and 

 lx.75 inches. 



When the eggs are taken, the fe- 

 male, after a couple of days deliber- 

 ation, lays another set and I have 

 known this to be repeated until twen- 

 ty-four eggs have been laid. If the 

 eggs are not taken, only one brood is 

 raised in a season. 



Chas. C. Pukdum, Woods Holl, Mass. 

 ♦♦♦ 



The Blue-gray Gnat-catcher. 



Polioptila caerulea. (Linn.) 

 My first acquaintance with this tiny 

 feathered tribe* was in the summer of 

 1892. I had been looking for this 

 bird some time before I found it. 

 From the reports given I thought the 

 bird must be plentiful and so com- 

 menced to look for it and it was more 

 than a year before I got a glimpse of 

 him. Oliver Davie, in his "Nests and 

 Eggs of North American Birds," page 

 429, says : — "The Blue-gray Gnat- 

 catcher is an abundant bird through- 

 out most of the wooded districts of 

 the United States, breeding in suit- 

 able places south of 42° " And from 

 a report given on page 281 : — " Bird 

 Migrations in the Mississippi Valley, " 

 one would think the bird common. I 

 lived in southern Indiana for many 

 years and never remember seeing the 

 the bird. I lived in Texas eight years 

 before I saw it. It was in the south- 

 ern part of Anderson Co., Texas, that 

 I first seen it, in May, 1892. A pair 

 had been building their nest for sever- 



al years in the trees in the yard of Mr. 

 W. W. Miles ; he pointed the bird 

 out to me and asked what it was and 

 as soon as I saw it, said it. was a Blue- 

 gray Gnat-catcher. 



We instituted a search for its nest 

 and after a few days found it saddled 

 on a limb about twelve feet from the 

 ground in a Post Oak sapling. 



The female remained on the nest 

 until I removed her. There were five 

 eggs, but were too far advanced in in- 

 cubation to be saved. I only took 

 one out of the nest to examine it, yet 

 the old bird forsook the nest and com- 

 menced tearing it up the very next 

 day. They commenced to build a new 

 nest the next week which after com- 

 pletion they abandoned. On June 

 13th, the birds commenced building 

 in the same yard within a few feet 

 of the house. I saw the bird when 

 she was flitting from limb to limb 

 with her bill full of spider webs and 

 finally selecting a nesting site she 

 commenced to build. 



I watched the birds closely day by 

 day until the nest was completed and 

 the complement of eggs laid. Both 

 birds labored industriously from day 

 dawn until dusk, and on June 17, just 

 four days from the time the nest was 

 started, the first egg was laid, and on 

 the 20th I collected the nest and eggs 

 which lie before me on the table as I 

 write. The nest is composed of lich- 

 ens bound together with fine hair, 

 wool, cotton and spider webs ; the 

 outside ornamented with feathers 

 from the Cardinal (cardinalis cordin- 



