Nesting is undertaken at Tacoma at least by the third week in April, and we have found eggs as early as the sixth of that month. The nest of the accompanying illustration (photogravure) is composed solely of the coiled stems of the dried bulrushes, amongst which it is placed, with a lining of clean dried grass-stems. Few eggs exceed in beauty those of the Red-winged Black-bird. The background is a pale bluish green of great delicacy, and upon this occur sharply-defined spots, blotches, marblings, traceries, and “pen-work” of dark sepia, purplish black, drab, and heliotrope purple. Or a spot of color appears to be deeply imbedded in the fine, strong texture of the shell, and carries about it an aura of diminishing color. Occasionally, the whole egg is suffused with pale brownish, or, more rarely, it is entirely unmarked. Incubation lasts fourteen days and the young are ready to leave the nest in a little over two weeks more. They are frizzly, helpless, complaining little creatures, but if they cannot fly well they can clamber, and they cling with the grip of terrified monkeys. Our Northwestern Red-wings are normally migratory, but they also winter with us irregularly; and this habit appears to be gaining ground as the guarantee of food becomes more certain. Numbers of them subsist in both Seattle and Tacoma in the vicinity of grain elevators, where they will have comfortable sustenance until such time as the augmented English Sparrows decree death to all native birds. No. 21. YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD. A. O. U. No. 497. Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus (Bonap.). Description.—_Adult male_: Head, neck all around, and breast orange yellow; lores and feathers skirting eyes and bill, black; a double white patch on folded wing formed by greater and lesser coverts, but interrupted by black of bastard wing; usually a little yellow about vent and on tibiæ; the remaining plumage black, dull or subdued, and turning brown on wing-tips and tail. _Female_: Dark brown; line over eye, throat, and upper breast dull yellow. Length 10.00-11.00 (254-279.4); wing 5.30-5.60 (134.6-142.2); tail 4.00-4.50 (101.6-114.3); bill .90 (22); tarsus 1.25 (31.8). Female smaller, length 8.00-9.50 (203.2-241.3). Recognition Marks.—Robin size; yellow head and breast; white wing-patches. Nesting.—_Nest_: a bulky but usually neat fabric of dried grasses, reeds or cat-tails lashed to growing ones; 5-7 inches in diameter outside by 5-8 deep; inside deeply cupped. _Eggs_: 3-6, grayish green spotted or clouded with reddish brown, rarely scrawled as in _Agelaius_; elongate ovate in shape. Av. size, 1.10 × .75 (27.9 × 19). _Season_: May or June; one brood. General Range.—Western North America from Wisconsin, Illinois and Texas to the Pacific Coast, and from British Columbia and the Saskatchewan River southward to the Valley of Mexico. Accidental in Middle and Atlantic States.