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 Io2 THE CONDOP. VOL. IX sight in what seemed to me a very exposed pl.ace, there being no leaves near it, and the old scraggly tree seemed to afford poor protection. On that evening when I first found the nest, I watched until nearly dark and finally .left the male still building and the female catching insects. Not once had she offered to assist in the nest building. At six A. i. the next morning the male was at work, but the female was nowhere in sight. I was unable to stay long at that time, but when I returned at nine-thirty the male was still working, tho there was a longer interval between his coming than there had been in the early morn- ing or the night before. His manner of approaching the tree was in a half or three-quarter circle. He would come flying along on about a level with the tree top, and just before reach- ing the tree would descend in a circular sweep, sometimes alighting on a twig near the nest, sometimes landing in the nest itself. At twenty minutes to ten, when the male came, he deposited his mouthful of fine material in the nest, then reached over and worked upon the outside. Having arranged this to his satisfaction, he turned about in the nest to shape it; then, still sitting squarely in it, he sang his low warbling song. It was scarcely more than a whisper and had I not seen the throat move I might have doubted its coming from a bird. Twice that morning I saw him sing on the nest. Shortly before ten the female bird appeared in the tree for the first time, to my knowledge. She came from the top but did not circle as was the custom of the male. Before she could reach the nest her mate drove her away. However, when the male had gone, she slipped onto the nest with a mouthful, shaping it before she left. Soon after this, both birds came at once and the female got the nest. The male settled down beside her and both worked upon it. The material the female brought at this time was long and looked like white sage. In an hour and a half that morning both birds came to the nest fourteen times, the male nine and the female five times. The longest interval was thirty minutes, the shortest three. This was one of the hottest mornings of the year, and at eleven o'clock the sun beat down upon the nest. Both birds came panting and it was at this time that work was slackened. After the nest was finished and the eggs laid, the birds for some unknown reason deserted it. From the top of the Arroyo I could see that there were eggs in the nest but could not tell how many. Later when I was sure that the nest was deserted and I went to get a photograph I found it torn and the eggs gone. An examination proved it to be made of fine gray material. There was one old piece of soiled gray twine, some leaves and stems of white sage, and short, fine fibers. It was a firm, compact, saucer-shaped nest. On June eleventh another male Phainopepla commenced building in a very scraggly, open, pepper tree that grew in the Parkway on Avenue Sixty-six, just across from my home. Tho from my porch I could watch their comings and go- ings I could not see the nest plainly. There was no place where I could conceal myself and I was so afraid that I would scare them away that I did not attempt to watch at the nest as I had at the Arroyo one. However, I was able to see that, as in the case of the other nest, the male did most of the building. The female helped some, but the most of the time she was about on the wires in the neighborhood, and nest-building concerned her not. The male had the same way of circling the tree when he came to it/is in the other case. I thought the material of this nest was finer than that of the other. Once the male came into the yard and stripped the fibers off from a castor bean tree, and twice I saw him taking something from the bark of the pepper tree. The nest