Page:Condor3(6).djvu/42

 Nov., 9o. I THE CONDOR 79 most partial to the edge of clearings, where it carefully works over the deer-brush in search of food. Occasionally it is found in the higher conifers, and is perhaps the most active of the warblers. The black-throated gray warbler nests commonly about Fyffe, where the following nesting records were secured. A wide range of nesting sites is shown, the birds building from low bushes well up into the pines. June '5, '897 a nest xvas noted seven feet up in the center of a manzanita bush containing four badly incubated eggs. In ,899 Mr. Cartiger located a number of nests, the first being 2 feet up on a drooping limb of a pine. This was collected with its four fresh eggs, the circumstance being shown in the accompanying half- tone. The l(cation was an ideal one, being a snall clearing in the forest, with towering timber all about. June 7 Mr. Carriger found another nest, which the young were just leaving; on the same day a nest fi)ur feet up on a horizontal Cea,olhus limb, containing three fresh eggs; another five feet up in the deer- brush with four fresh eggs. On June 9 Mr. Cartiger followed a female warbler to her nest, which was placed on a horizontal pine limb, 52 feet above the ground and contained four eggs. The nests of this species resemble those of the yellow whrbler more closely than the nests of any other species, being composed out- wardly of gray plant material, with a lining of fibers and feathers. On June 6, 9oo Mr. Atkinson found a nest and fi)ur fresh eggs built in a small cedar sapling four feet up, while I found a nest with large young at Fyffe on June 6. 9 m, built sinilarly in a cedar six feet frmn the ground. Dendroica t0wnsendi. Townsend Warbler. [A nale was shot near Gilmore Lake, on the slope of Mr. Tallac, at 85oo feet early in August 9oo, by Mr. Charles Merrill. The specimen was skinned by myself and is in my collection, but at present not available for the exact date. W. W. P.] Dendroica occidentalis. Hermit Warbler. This species has served to give Fyffe some little prominence, inasmuch as it has been studied with interest by numerous omithole}gists who have made Fyffe their headquarters. I have found it nowhere so common as at Fyffe in summer, although scattering birds have been observed as far up as the summit. The hermit warbler is pre-eminently a fre- quenter of the conifers, although it feeds in the bushes and black oaks in common with other species. Its song is different from that of any other Sierra warbler and seems well represented by the words zce'/e zee,[e zee,,'[e zee/, which I borrow from a letter written me by Mr. C. W. Bowles of Waldo, Oregon. Personally I have been unable to hit upon a combination of letters which represents the song nearly so well. At c,!ose range the song of the hermit warbler appears weak rather than otherwise, yet at Fyffe I was impressed with its penetration. In front of the station a corral of several acres reaches back to the border of the forest, and yet the song of this warbler could be heard with great distinctness as we sat on the porch. The bird will often mount to the higher branches of the conifers by successive hops, much after the manner of the blue-fronted jay. Up to the pres- ent time the eggs of the western warbler have remained rare in collections, and the few known sets have been taken within a small radius of Fyffe. Some years ago Mr. Chas. A. Allen found several nests of this warbler at Blue Canyon, but through various mishaps failed to secure a set o[ eggs.' Major Bendire collected a set of warbler's eggs on the Des Chutes River in Idaho which he thought be- longed to this species, but the parent bird was lost after being shot and I believe the identity was never cleared up. On Jnne o, 896 Mr. R. H. Beck collected a nest and four eggs from a limb of a yellow pine 4 feet up, near the American River at 3,5oo feet altitude. The nest was reached by means of a ladder carried a