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 218 THE CONDOR Vol. XIV former position of the road, and I had some difficulty to find my way. The road finally led northward and eastward, down into the Missouri Valley, through country not unlike that of the Gallatin Valley, seen the day before. I crossed the river on a long bridge and' entered the small town of 'Toston. Bt>th the horse and I were hot, tired and hungry, so I decided to rest the remainder of the afternoon and ride on to Townsend in the cool of the evening. I put the hors in a livery barn and after lunch in a small restaurant, finding nothing of inter- est in the town, I strolled a little way along the river bank, and sat down in the shade of the cottonwoods. A pair of Western Kingbirds had a nest full of young in the fork of a cot- tonwood directly over my head. They started to scold me, but after a short time gave it up and went back to feeding the young again. Their scolding, however, brought out the other leathered inhabitants, consisting of several Rob- ins and Yellow Warblers, a pair of Catbirds, a Western Wood Pewee, and a - brilliantly colored Bullock Oriole. They watched me for a time but soon went 'away and left me to watch the Kingbirds. The young were very noisy. They kept up a continual clatter all the time, varied only when the parents came with food when it became much louder. This nest was the first one I had seen in the fork of a cottonwood. The commonest location for the Western Kingbird's nest in Montana seems to be between the cross arms of a telegraph pole. I had seen several such nests, near the railroad track at Logan the day before. When built in such a place, one of the birds may usually be seen on guard, sitting on the telegraph wire within five or six feet of the nest. In fact, whenever I see a Western Kingbird thus seated on a wire, I look for a nest nearby and am usually successful in finding it. Here in the Missouri Valley the Western Kingbird is decidedly commoner than the eastern species.. The reverse is true in the Gal- latin Valley, where the elevation is some 700 feet higher, the factor which prob- ably causes the difference. After some time I wandered out on the bridge I had crossed. Cliff Swal- lows were nesting somewhere beneath the bridge in large numbers. On the edge of the river not far from the bridge they were gathering mud for their nests, though it seemed to me rather late in the year for nest constrction to be still going on. Fifteen or twenty birds were gathered in one spot, gathering the mud. Ttiey poised daintily, only their feet and bills touching the mud, while their wings were wide-spread and constantly fluttering. In the evening I rode on, down the Missouri Valley to Townsend, where I stopped for the night. On the way I was glad to see many Bobolinks, and in one place, several Lark Buntings, a bird quite common in some parts of Mon- tana, but with which I have yet to make intimate acquaintance. One of the Buntings favored me with a flight song, a performance I had never witnessed before. T-he next day I rode over a low divide between the Missouri and Prickly Pear valleys, crossing from Broadwater to Lewis and Clark County, and stop- ping the next night at Helena. After leaving the Missouri Valley the road led for most of the way over a barren rocky stretch of country where there were no birds. When I reached the Prickly Pear Valley it was the middle of the afternoon, when birds were silent and not stirring. I remember but one obser- vation that day that seems worth recording. An electric power line follows the road here for.several miles, and near East Helena, I found beneath the wires, the dead body of a Wilson Phalarope. The bird had evidently killed itself by