Page:Condor14(5).djvu/15

Sept., 1912 DISCOVERY O1 ? NEST AND EGGS O1 ? CALIFORNIA PINE GROSBEAK 169 Personally, however, I was not greatly influenced by the findings of either Price or Coues, for while I considered them both to be correct in their state- ments I further believed Price had simply found the young of late, and Coues of early, breeding birds. Being of this impression I had nearly always visited the region during the month of June; for I could see no reason why the nesting time of Pinicola should be so radically different from 95 percent of the Sierran avi-fauna, which nests between May 15 and June 30, and especially as the re- maining five percent consisted of such remarkably early nesting birds as the Clarke Nutcracker, Canada Goose, American Merganser and some of the Rap- tores. The fact of Pinicola being resident, or at least migrating only a short distance, too, seemed to indicate that the time of nesting would be rather earlier than later, notwithstanding the high altitude of its home; for/being undoubtedly a tree-nesting bird and arboreal in its habits it did not seem that it would be so Fig. 68. '?JIM ?' AND HEINEMANN ROUNDING A PRECIPITOUS MOUNTAIN SIDE AT (?500 FEET ALTITUDE greatly affected by the depth of snow on the ground, or other severe climatic conditions, as to delay nesting a month later than the majority of spedes in the same habitat. Littlejohn suggested that if there was a delay it might be caused by the lack of some certain food supply for the young. To me, however, this explafiation did not seem tenable. While our own observations rather favored Price's theory in the respect that no young of the year were noted in June or early July, yet on the other hand they also favored Coues' in that we found no birds engaged in nest building in late June or early July which according to Price would be the proper season for such operations. In fact, as before stated, we found at all dates the birds ap- parently leading a sort of Bohemian life; but I accounted for this pelasgic habitus by the fact that as the extreme limits of the nesting season of most Sierran birds extended from May 10 to July 15, it allowed them considerable latitude in this respect.