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 THE CONDOR Vor.. V The observations on one pair of birds for a few years are limited to one day each year and during the short period of collecting the set, and owing to forced marches to and from the nest the time was necessarily short. It was in an amus- ing way that I became acquainted with the pair. Having formed the acquaint- ance of a miner, stockman and hunter in my home town during November 897 talk gradually drifted into ornithology and fa'Icons. He told me there was "a pair of those bullet hawks" nesting on his ranch and we made arrangements for my visit in the spring. The following April I set out on my wheel and by late after- noon had made a creditable run over the mountains and was suffering consider- ably from the intense heat. Water was hard to get owing to the drought having let the small streams run dry. Within a few miles of my destination was a small stock ranch and the proprietor, a young man, hailed me. "Say! where are you going with that fish basket?" "Fishing, of course!" I replied. "Oh! that's played out. Do you know Harry Taylor?" This was too interesting to pass so we adjourned to the cabin and talked things over with spring-water lemonade and big black cigars, and incidentally I learned that Mr. H. R. Taylor of golden eagle fame and editor of the detunct Ni- dologist had been in this vicinity collecting annual rents from golden eagle nests, and I also found out where they were but did not visit them owing to a mutual understanding between self-'respecting members of the Cooper Ornithological Club that the law is violated when one collector interferes with another's nests, but I decided that the prairie falcon's nest was mine by right of a grant from the lessee of the land four months before Mr. Taylor had visited it. He was shown to it by friends on the 22d to the 24th of March and obtained a set of five fresh eggs. By evening I had reached my destination and early next morning my host led the way over innumerable and rough trails through well wooded hills. Sycamore, alder, maple, oaks, an occasional laurel and madtone, with considerable under- brush skirted the creeks and dry water courses, while plenty of oaks were scat- tered about the hillsides together, with much promiscuous brush. One long range of hills was covered with chemise and sage only, rocky and devoid of grass, and and the only trees were small pines. On the south side of the canyon were thick- ets of manzanita, tough and unbending, the lower branches hard and sharp, a formidable phalanx of spears to break through. After two hours of hard rustling the ridge containing the nest was reached, rugged and rough, covered with manza- nita, prickly scrub-oak, sage, and chemise contrarily sending its slender but wiry branches with the downward slope of the hill, contesting our advance on an up grade. Here nature had piled her architecture of sandstone rock. Mimic cities of houses on the hills, pyramids of light-colored sandstone were scattered imposingly among the silvery-green pines, and castles of fantastic shapes rose majestically higher, while round about lay the fragments, large and small, of unfinished or dis- carded work. Turkey vultures, so many as twenty-seven at one time, were glid- ing closely overhead seemingly viewing the intrusion into their domain with sur- prise and distrust. An occasional western redtail appeared in the landscape of oak-dotted grassy knolls against the blue sky. Denizens of the sage, some variety of sparrows, too shy to identify, now and then flitted along. California tiarashers (Toxostoma redivivum), natural born mockers, sang their matins or furnished mel- ody in various forms, far from view in the chemise and sage, while the harsh scream of the California jay or the cheery springtime call of the red-shafted flicker were carried along the canyon, across which was a battered and broken ledge no- where over 2o0 feet high, the home of the prairie falcon. We were now in a dry