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 184 Vol. XIII SOME ROBINS' AND MOURNING DOVES' NESTS IN THE LOWER YAKIMA VALLEY, WASHINGTON By CLARENCE HAMILTON KENNEDY WITH TWO III, USTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR HEN I. first came Into the Yakima Valley, I was pleased to be greeted by an old friend, the robin (P/aneslicus mzralom'us prop[nquus), slightly paler than his eastern relative and with the same cheerful note and mien; but I was surprised to see pair a complacently building a nest on a beam in a cow Fig. 55. A MOURNING DOVE'S NEST ON A POST shed. However, on considering further I ceased to wonder. The Lower Yakima Valley, lying as it does in the Upper Sonoran Zone, is a sage-brush desert except along the streams, where are thickets of willows and cottonwoods, and in its more level portions, where are now many square miles of irrigated fields and orchards. Because of the past scarcity of timber, the robins and also Mourning Doves (7enaidura macroura carolinens/s) appear to have lost to some extent their desire and ability to build in trees. Now that large areas of the valley are covered with orchards and that shade trees are numerous, they yet occasionally revert to their former habit of building in places other than trees. It is possible, though, that as irrigation is recent here, the robins and doves have spread out from their formerly more restricted habitat about the water holes and streams, into the sur-