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48 Nearly every picture that I took of the young specimen shows her in the act of hissing. The sound was made well back in the throat, like the passage of air thro a moderately large opening, a rather subdued sound, not unlike the sharp hiss made by the human tongue and teeth. The note of the old birds was merely a single menacing cry, perhaps most truly characterized as a scream, uttered as they darted toward us when we approached their nesting place. This cry might be compared to that of the red-tailed hawk so commonly heard in the big timber of the bottom lands of Kansas.

Unfortunately the skin of the male bird spoiled in transit but I still have the skull and wings. The female skin Martin sold to an eastern museum, I understand, while the skin of the youngster is mounted in the museum of the State Normal School at Greely, Colorado.

Topeka, Kansas.

 

HAD always admired him—this dainty little blue-drab bird with his white breast, long black tail with conspicuous white outer shafts, and blue-drab mantle, so, when on the morning of July 9, I came upon him and his mate engaged in household duties, my delight was boundless. We had come up from Los Angeles, my companion and I, for a week's stay in the Little Santa Anita Canyon situated in the Sierra Madre Mountain range.

The first nest of the gnatcatcher (Polioptila cærulea obscura) that we found was near the top of a holly bush that had grown so tall that it was more like a tree than a shrub. The nest was in an exposed, upright crotch, and tho overhanging branches sheltered it from the sun the most of the day, not a twig or a leaf obstructed our view of it. It was cup-shaped, being much deeper than broad, and was made of fine gray material that just matched the tree trunk. There were three birds in the nest and we judged them to be somewhat less than a week old.

We stationed ourselves among the tall weeds in a shady spot and the birds, paying not the least attention to us, went on with their feeding, thus enabling us to observe them under natural conditions. Another holly bush grew close by the nest tree, and when we first found the nest and saw that each bird came into this neighboring holly before feeding, we thought it was fear of us on their part that made them do it; but we soon found that this was a regular habit of theirs. In all the hours that I watched at the nest, I never saw them go directly to the young. Even when they came from the nest side they flew past and into this one tree, where they hopped about in it as if in search of food, then usually down onto a bare twig, and from there straight across the several feet of clearing to the nest. It seemed like such a waste of time, but it was their way.

These western gnatcatchers were so much alike that our first thought was whether we would be able to tell the male and female apart. They looked exactly alike except that one bird seemed in better plumage, looking slicker and smoother than the other. However, we had not watched long before we discovered that one of the white tail-feathers of one bird was shorter than the other. It looked as if a new white feather was just coming in, which proved to be the case. It was on the