ON SOME NEW FORMS OF AMERICAN BIRDS. 605 
were supposed to nest exclusively in deep and inaccessible crev- 
ices of rocks, where they were not likely to be traced. Mr. 
H. E. Dresser afterwards met with its nest and eggs in western 
Texas, though he gives no description of either. He found 
this species rather common near San Antonio, where it remained 
to breed. One pair frequented a printing office at that place, 
an old half-ruined building, where their familiar habits made 
them great favorites with the workmen, who informed him that 
the previous spring they had built a nest and reared their young 
in an old wall close by, and that they became very tame. At 
Dr. Heermann’s rancho, on the Medina, he procured the eggs 
of this bird, as well as those of the Carolina and Bewick’s wrens 
(Thryothorus Ludoviciana and T. Bewickii), by nailing up cigar- 
boxes with holes cut in front, wherever these birds were likely to 
build. 
Mr. Sumichrast describes its nest* as very skilfully wrought 
with spiders’ webs, and built in the crevices of old walls, or in the 
interstices between the tiles under the roofs of the houses. A 
nest with four eggs, supposed to be those of this species, was ob- 
tained in western Texas by Mr. J. H. Clark; it was cup-shaped, 
not large, and with only a slight depression. The eggs, four in 
number, were unusually oblong and pointed for eggs of this 
family, and measured °80 by -60 of an inch, with a crystalline- 
white ground, profusely covered with numerous and large blotches 
of a reddish or cinnamon brown. 
So far as the observations of Mr. Ridgway enabled him to 
notice this bird, he found it much less common than the Sal- 
pinctes obsoletes, and inhabiting only the most secluded and 
rocky recesses of the mountains. Its common note of alarm 
is described as a peculiarly ringing dink. It has a remarkably 
odd and indescribably singular chant, utterly unlike anything 
else Mr. Ridgway ever heard. This consists of a series of 
detached whistles, beginning in a high fine key, every note 
clear, smooth, and of equal length, each in succession being a 
egree lower than the preceding one, and only ending when 
the bottom of the scale is reached. The tone is soft, rich and 
silvery, resembling somewhat the whistling of the cardinal gros- 
beak. 
It was often seen to fly nearly perpendicularly up the face of a 
*This remark applies to the Mexican race. 
