Page:Auk Volume 13-1896.djvu/162

 I24 Thayer on Protective Coloration. L April 1889, I found a nest in a small oak, containing two eggs. May 4, 1894, I found a pair brooding. May 16, a pair were building in an oak, fifteen to twenty feet above the ground. May 2S, the birds seemed to be through building and were flitting about warbling and apparently taking a rest before time to begin brooding. May 31, after a Blue Jay had created an excitement in the oak, the Gnatcatchers began taking their nest to pieces, and went to work putting it up in a low oak a few rods away. June 7 the birds were still building. June 11 they were brooding, changing places in the nest. June 25 the young were being fed. July 4 the young were out. being fed in the brush. From May 16, or more accurately May 14 — ■ for the nest had been begun at least two days before I found it — from May 14 to July 4, those birds were working to get one brood launched. The first nest took them two weeks, the second one about ten days. Their method of work was interesting. The nest was laid on a horizontal branch. Their plan seemed to be twofold, to make the walls compact and strong by using only fine bits of material and packing them tightly together — drilling them in — -and at the same time to give the walls form and keep them trim and shipshape by moulding inside and smoothing the rim and the outside. Sometimes the builder would smooth the brim with its neck and bill like a Redstart, as a person sharpens a knife on a whetstone, a stroke one way and then a stroke the other. The birds usually got inside to work, but there was a twig beside the nest that served for scaffolding, and they sometimes stood on that to work on the outside. They both worked, flying rapidly back and forth with material. The second nest rested lightly on a horizontal limb, but was supported mainly by two twigs which forked so as to enclose it. It was a beautiful nest, covered with lichen and lined with feathers. The birds were not at all shv. They let me come so near that 1 saw the black lines bordering the blue forehead of the male. Sialia mexicana occidentalis. Western Bluebird. — Mr. Merriam told me he had seen the Bluebirds build in the mud nests of Swallows in trees; but most frequently in knot holes and in the abandoned nests of the small Woodpeckers. THE LAW WHICH UNDERLIES PROTECTIVE COLORATION. BY ABBOTT H. THAYER. This article is intended to set forth a beautiful law of nature which, so far as I can discover, has never been pointed out in print. It is the law of gradation in the coloring of animals, and