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 54 THE CONDOR Vol. XIX yond, told ne of the birds. "When they first get here, if there isn't a royal battle over those snags !" she exclaimed. "Fight? Yes, scream and holler and fight around those trees. I used to set and watch them birds." The chip- munks, she said, climbed the stub and the Swallows drove them off. "I used to like to see them fight a squirrel down," she said. "Half a dozen would dive right at him and they'd put him down in a hurry." Only one family of Tree Swallows were in possession at the time of my visit and their nest was about twenty feet from the ground on the east side of the stub. Once when I was watching it the gardener warned me not to sit near the stubs when the wind was high for, as she said, "they go over sometimes"; but her husband in a tone of superiority remarked that they wouldn't fall in my direction as the wind was from the ocean. When after several visits the birds had become somewhat used to me I put my camp stool down at the foot of the stub where the bracken stood above my head, and the Swallows went about their business unmindful even of the white dogs that had accompanied me. The bark had fallen off the stub from the nest hole down, but still held above and made a shading portico for the door. The Swallows in coming to the nest would sail down on set wings. If I did not see them I knew they were approaching by seeing their shadows waver- ing over the shiny gray trunk and the ferns below, and also by the actions of the young which would crane out of the doorway till the sun lit. up their three big chirring yellow throats. When the three nestlings' heads crowded the doorway it looked as if the builder, the 'carpintero', had not measured for such a cup full. Occasionally one of the old birds would go down into the nest out of sight, but generally they clung to the doorway feeding the young from out- side. When the female was hanging there the dull sheen of green that showed on her back was in striking contrast to the handsome steel green of the back of the male. When one of the nestlings stood in the doorway the sun rested on its sooty head and lit up its bright eyes as it pecked vaguely at the wood. It was looking out into the world. Perhaps it felt the call of the open sky. In any case the next time I came that way the old stub stood silent and deserted. From being a center of life and interest. a home, it had become a charred dead tree trunk. I turned away as from the empty house of a friend. (To be continued) A LIST OF THE BIRDS BREEDING IN SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA By HAROLD E. HANSEN and WALTER A. SQUIRES WITH FOUR PHOTOS BY THE AUTHORS AN FRANCISCO County has an area of forty-one square miles. In ele- vation it varies from sea-level up to a little less than one thousand feet above the sea. The eastern part of the county lies in the 'Upper Sonoran life-zone and the western portion in the Transition life-zone. Alcatraz, Island and Yerba Buena Island lying in San Francisco Bay, and the Farallon Islands some thirty miles out to sea beyond the Golden Gate, are included in the coun-