1881.] - Motes on the Breeding of a few Western Birds. 217 
of it; the little dove, while nowhere common, is found throughout 
our southern borders. The short-legged pewee ( Contopus richard- 
Sonit) does not seem to be rare throughout this southern country, 
but I only succeeded in finding one nest. It was saddled toa 
horizontal limb after the fashion of our wood pewee, and was 
composed of small twigs and grasses fastened together and to the 
limb with saliva, and was lined with finer grasses. The three 
eggs, well advanced in incubation, were of the size and shape of 
those of the wood pewee, and were of the same body color, but 
marked with some very large and some small reddish-brown 
blotches, chiefly around the middle of the egg. I also founda 
set of four eggs of another fly-catcher, the ash-throated fly-catcher 
(Myiarchus mexicanus), the same day that I found the nest of 
the short-legged pewee. It was ina hole in a willow tree, and 
consisted merely of a bunch of matted hair and wool. The eggs 
are so like those of the great crested fly-catcher as to be almost 
indistinguishable. On another hunt shortly before leaving Tuc- 
son, I found nests and eggs of two more thrushes peculiar to this 
border fauna, viz: the crissal thrush ( Harporhynchus crissalts ) 
and the curve-billed thrush (A. curvirostris). The former nest 
was situated in a low oak tree, a few feet from the ground, and 
was not large for the size of the bird. It was composed of coarse 
and small sticks, and was lined with fibers ; the eggs, two in num- 
ber and well incubated, were of the size and color of the robin’s 
egg. The curve-billed thrush had nested in a tall cactus, and its 
nest was much larger and deeper than that of the 1. crissalis ; 
the cavity, in fact, was nearly four inches deep. The three eggs, 
about the size of the former, were of a light-green color, marked 
all over with fine red spots. Several other nests found the same 
day, but empty, were likewise in the cactus. A set of two eggs 
of the Western night-hawk ( Chordeiles henryi), found somewhat 
later, did not differ materiaily from the eggs of the C. popetue, 
and were laid on the bare ground beneath a bush. The birds are 
everywhere abundant. 
I will now describe the nest and eggs of another minute spe- 
cies of the titmouse family, the verdin or yellow-headed titmouse - 
(Paroides flaviceps). 1 first observed the nests of these little birds 
on the Colorado desert, where, out of many I examined, only one 
was occupied, and that by fully fledged young. At Tucson, how- 
ever, I succeeded in finding two nests of the second laying, with 
VOL, XV.—wNo. IIT, 16 
