This bird is very similar to the last but has still less white on the outer tail feathers. Like the last, the nests of this species usually lack the exterior covering of lichens, being made of vegetable fibres and plant down, firmly quilted together and saddled on horizontal limbs or placed in forks of trees at any height from the ground. Their eggs are grayish white, specked with bright reddish brown. Size .55 × .44. Data.--Escondido, Cal., May 17, 1903. 5 eggs. Nest on a large limb of a sycamore, 30 feet above ground; made of weed fibres, etc., lined with hair and fine fibres. THRUSHES, SOLITAIRES, BLUEBIRDS, ETC. Family TURDIDAE 754. TOWNSEND'S SOLITAIRE. _Myadestes townsendi._ Range.--Western United States, breeding from Arizona, New Mexico and southern California north to British Columbia. This unique species is of a uniform brownish gray color, with a white eye ring, narrow bar on wing, and outer tail feathers, and with the bases of the primaries rusty colored. It is a ground inhabiting bird, feeding upon insects and berries in shrubbery and thickets. Their song is said to be liquid, melodious and often long continued, equaling that of any other bird. They nest on the ground in hollows under banks or crevices about roots of trees or fallen stumps, making a large, loosely constructed pile of weeds and trash, hollowed and lined with rootlets. The three or four eggs, which are laid in June, are grayish white, spotted with pale brown, chiefly or most abundantly about the large end. Size .96 × .70. 755. WOOD THRUSH. _Hylocichla mustelina._ Range.--Eastern United States, breeding from North Carolina and Kansas north to northern United States; winters south of our borders. This Thrush with his brightly spotted breast is the most handsome of this group of musical birds. They are common in damp woods and thickets, in which places they breed, placing their nests of straw, leaves and grasses in low trees usually between four and ten feet from the ground; their nests are often very rustic, being ornamented by pieces of paper and twigs with dead leaves attached hanging from the sides of the quite bulky structures. During May or June they lay three or four greenish blue eggs of about the shade of a Robin's. Size 1.05 × .70. [Illustration 444: Blue-gray Gnatcatcher.] [Illustration: Grayish white.] [Illustration: Grayish white.] [Illustration: Greenish blue.] [Illustration: left hand margin.] Page 443 756. VEERY. _Hylocichla fuscescens fuscescens._ Range.--Eastern North America, breeding in the northern half of its United States range and in the southern British Provinces.