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 THE CONDOR Vol. III
 * lathead take :indings

BY P.M. SILLOWAY, LEWISTON, MONT. [Read before the Northern Division of the Cooper Orn. Club, Jan. 12, 9oJ]. OW frequently it happens that after we have given up active quest for a certain desideratum, we chance upon it some fine day with startling abruptness! Thus it occurred that the indefinable element we or- nithologists call Luck predominated largely in the taking of my first (and only) set of Z)endrca auduboni (Towns.)., vulgarly known among A. O. U. associates as Audubon's Warbler. Upon my arrival at our camp at the northeastern corner of Flathead Lake, on June i4, the tops of the lofty pines and tamaracks were animate with the movements of this handsome warbler; and in watching the flitting visitants to a certain tree, I located a nest near the ex- tremity of a horizontal branch, to which the parents were making trips so regu- larly that nothing but young birds in the nest could explain the cause of their activity. With a heavy heart I concluded that I had arrived too late to see my hopes end in fruition by taking several sets of eggs of this warbler, and that for this season at least I must be content with.reading in TH} CONDOR how Mr. Howard had taken them in Arizona, or how Messrs. Barlow and Carriger had found them in the Sierras. Having left my irons at home, and having promised my wife that I should not make any venturesome climbs dur- ing my collecting trip, I paid little at- tention to the tops of the large pines in my daily outings, though now and then I cast covetous glances upward when any undue activity of the flitting birds or any unnatural accretion in the tufts of extended foliage arrested my sweep- ing examination of the surroundings. Thus I explored the region near our camp day after day, always led onward (and frequently upward) by a hope that some belated warbler might have a home in the top of one of the young firs, into which I could peep with heart beating joyfully in anticipation of a set of eggs snugly ensconced in a downy cot. Didn't Davie say that the nests of this species are situated at various heights, ranging all the way from three to thirty feet? Surely all the Flathead warblers were not nesting in the tops of the tall pines! And surely all the Flathead warblers had not con- cluded their nidification thus early in the season! There is a most gracious promise, of most wonderful application, and I fancy how often the eager collector, as he further pursues his yet bootless quest, yields to the dreary monotone of his in- ward mentor, "seek and ye shall find", until all previous disappointments are effaced in the gratifying moment that he looks into the nest and reads in letters of rosy tinge, ./kesh. You see that at last I get to the point. With varying fortune the days came and went, until the 27th of June. dawned. I had ceased my yearning after the seemingly unattainable, and had got down to the quest of a pair of ?orzanacarolina (Linn.)., "O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!" Hear- ing the chick-like chirping of a pair of passing (?occothraustes vesfiertins mont- anus (Ridgw.)--Fellows will understand this to mean the Western Evening Grosbeak--and seeing them hurrying rapidly overhead as if a nest might be the objective point, I dropped further operations against the Sofas, and struck a line through the dense growth of slender willows fringing the lake, in hopes of chancing upon a nest of Coccothraustes. From sheer force of habit I scanned the willow canopy, and had scarcely entered the growth, when a suspicious-looking grayish mass in a fork of one of the stems caught my eye. Giving the trunk a half-hearted