NOTES AND. NESTING HABITS OF BIRDS. ee 
takes possession of natural hollows in stumps, uprooted “ snags,” 
me or the deserted excavation of the downy woodpecker. I found 
| a nest of the chimney swallow inside of a plank kiln for drying to- 
bacco, and another inside of the hollow trunk of a sycamore tree. 
At Olney, I found a nest of the blue jay, containing five eggs, 
` inside of an old deserted barn in the middle of the town, it being 
placed flat upon a sill. This is the only nest of the species I ever 
saw that was not placed inatree. At Mt. Carmel, I have also 
found a nest of Agelaius pheniceus, containing eggs, in a small 
elm tree about twenty feet from the ground. In Kansas the Eus- 
7 piza Americana is said to place its nest in trees ; but at Mt. Carmel 
it habitually places it on the ground in clover fields. The Chond- 
estes grammaca almost invariably nests on the ground in the 
Wabash valley. I have never found a nest otherwise located ; 
but at Sacramento, where dozens of nests of this bird were found, 
all but one were in oak trees, at heights varying from ten to thirty 
feet from the ground. It is difficult to understand why the species 
should be so much more arboreal in the vicinity of Sacramento, 
which is far more scantily wooded than the localities frequented 
by this bird, in Wabash valley. An instance of semi-parasitic 
habits is seen in the Otus Wilsonianus, which in Nevada habitually 
deposits its eggs in the old dilapidated nests of magpies. 
During a series of several seasons’ egg-collecting at Mt. Carmel, 
it was my constant experience to find several species of birds 
never laying more than three eggs at a complement; and the re- 
corded accounts of these species in various works saying that the 
Same birds laid habitually four or five eggs puzzled me consider- 
ably. Three eggs in a nest is the maximum number that I have 
_ ever found in Pyranga estiva and Cardinalis Virginianus. 
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