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 18 THE CONDOR VoL XX1 note", but it is more nearly a bell-like croak, a ghostly, ventriloquistic, droning sound, a rusty. hinge creaking in the wind, a voice of conscience coming from no whither and heard within. But the bird was not to be found at the base of a certain preappointed tree. Nor yet was it found with the nearest neighbors. What could have become of it ? A quickened and then an anxious search followed. But there were no more leadings from the birds. Frantically I examined every tree base within a hun- dred yards. Nothing doing. This repeated loss of time was getting serious. Fer- vently I prayed, "Oh, Lord, let me succeed just this once". I half believed the answer would come, but I had some misgivings as touching the efficacy of the bird's prayer. Well, before I went back to camp I would toil up the hill and see if there was anything doing on the hillside, where I had seen the bird disappear. Cun- ning hidey holes there were at the bases of the tree.s, but no nest. A bit of moss which protruded from a tree-trunk, a noble bole 3x/ feet in diameter, a little below where the regular coating of Evernia commenced, attracted my eye. It seemed to come from a hole rather than from the surface, as the other moss did. I levelled the binoculars. There was quite a bunch of moss in the hole, and be- hind the moss a gray head and a--yes, I am sure that is a glittering eye. Why-- why, that's the tree where my bird disappeared! It flew straight into its nest and I never knew it. But whoever would have thought of such a thing ? An un- broken shaft of a sturdy live tree, forty feet to the lowest limb, and dad, as all proper fir trees are, from about twenty feet up--above the snow line--with a stmggy coating of Evernia lichen. Yet here was this hole as sharp cut as the print of a giant spear-thrust, eight feet up from the ground. Well, the bird flushed when I was within twenty feet and I never saw her again until the nest was gathered (perhaps I dieln't look very hard; I wasn't in a sentimental mood). The hole was ten inches deep both horizofitally and verti- cally, but was only four inches wide in the middle passage. The bird had shaped her architecture admirably to the accommodations and even sat with tail pointed in--quite a luxury for cramped quarters. Nesting hollow 3 inches across and 2 deep, grass and pine needles with twigs and ab.undant moss (Evernia lichen) for he porch and filling. Bird returned repeatedly and silently after nest was removed, but there was no further demonstration either on her part or that of the male. Eggs fresh as paint ! 2'18/4-16 Towssend Solitaire; alt. 8200; July 17: You never know your luck! Also, they nest anywhere. I had eaten my Monday lunch in a sunny clearing, which had once been swept by a landslide, but is now being re-covered with scattered saplings. After that I set out to cross the remainder of the clear- ing, .when I spied a Townsend Solitaire sitting in the top of a small sapling about fifty feet from the edge of the woods. He was almost immediately joined by a bird which seemed to come up out of the open (dwarf) manzanita. There was a feeding scene, with some evidence of tender solicitude, whereupon both' ad- journed to the woods. I followed, after an interval, and as I entered'the somber depths a bird shot back past me into the open, and disappeared in a flash into the central depressed portion of the manzanita patch. I followed again in some be- wilderment, looked carefully at the bases of the few saplings in range, peeked under a few stones, and headed for another, for no particular reason, since it was one of hundreds. But out from under this one flushed Mistress Myadestes, and the secret was out,--218/4-16 Townsend Solitaire, right out in the open of