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 Jan., 1919 TfIE SOLITAIRES OF SHASTA 15 the camera. The bird does come back at last, but she will not suffer any motion on my part. The .light plays out and the game is off. The presence of the male, too, with his low creaks of solicitude has undoub. tedly made the female more sen- sitive. The taking of the nest after all,--this is a heart-breaking matter; but Sol- itaires are more common than we are. Nest a very frail, careless affair of scattered and spread sticks covering an area a foot square. Nest-hollow, carefully lined with grass obtained at some dis- ance, 3 inches across by lx deep. The most important point to emphasize ih the situation is the near presence of snowdrifts half encircling the tree under which the nest is placed, as, of course, the photographs show. The significance of this did not fully occur to me until in the afternoon Bert showed me the nest which is to be (D. V.) Vl49/3-16 T. S. l'ig. 2. NEST AND E(S o ' Tow.xs:,) SOLITAII{E; V148/4-16. The bird flushed lightly from a situation aliilOSt exactly like that of ViiS/l-16, and then fell to bug-catching. In this pllrsuit she again anti again ali.qhttd upon the sow, securing there, no doubt, benumbed or dead insects--a sort of Leucos- ticte of the lower levels. Snowbanks, then, are, perhaps, an agreeable feature of Solitaire environment. We spend the afternoon looking up Solitaire prospects, ,red hear three singing lnales, all believed to be new. V149/3-16 Townsend Solitaire, alt. 6900 feet, July 13, 1916: Nest found Monday, July 10, left for egg complement; revisited yesterday, as mentioned. My hat is off to Mr. Vrooman for having made this location, for the crooked- based tree which gives the nest shelter is simply one of ten thousand which clothe the raountain; and the male does nothing more by his presence than to set one to looking anywhere within 200 yards. Nevertheless these exact conditions have to be met: shade, shelter, outlook, and the near presence of snow-banks. The sharp falling-away of the ground immediately below this tree, i. e., after the nesting