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196 THE CONDOR Vol. XVI youngsters beside her. The round head and boldly spotted markings of the adult were plainly visible: we were looking on Spotted Owls at home! Small wonder that Van and I did something of a dance of triumph. To our aston- ishment the old bird did not seem to be disturbed in the least by our perform- ance although we were directly below her. She merely peered down upon us, giving us splendid views of her plumage. Finally we left her to herself while we went on to pitch camp and look up the small birds a bit. The forms were eharactevistie of the altitude. The full, deseending call of the olive-sided fly- catcher set the key note, reminding us that the lowlands were left behind. California purple finches were singing in considerable numbers from the taller trees, western tanagers made flashes of eolor, and in the open plaees ealliope hummers darted about. A eourting male was taken by Mr. van Rossem. Every thick-foliaged oak had its black-throated gray warblers and, in an inaccessible crevice of the eliff itself, hundreds of white-throated swifts were apparently nesting. Twice a golden eagle sailed over us high in the air. Next morning we reaehed the owl's nest early. To the best of my knowl- edge there had been but three previous authentie nesting reeords and aston- ishingly few reeords even of the birds themselves sinee the type was taken near old Fort Tejon in the early days of western ornithology. Bear with me, there- fore, if I set down their actions and ealls in perhaps too great detail. A tall fir tree grew elose in front of the eliff opposite the nest, and over a limb of this, as a preliminary to camera work, we tried to toss a weighted line. To our astonishment the weight almost struck the old owl. She had been perehing in the tree and so perfeet was her blending that we had not notieed her at all. She merely flew to a nearby tree. Her tameness was beeoming more and more apparent. About nine o'eloek, in spite of the noise of arranging rope and taekle in the fir, she (I use the feminine by assumption) flew direetly to the nest. Judging from her movements, and from the low, exeited squeak- ing of the young, she fed them--apparently something earried to them in her throat. If this was the ease, the young were soon satisfied, for they retired to the inner saneturn of the pot-hole until afternoon. The adult also slept the day away, but remained outside and in plain sight from where we swung from a limb of the fir fifty feet or so above the ground. We made what negatives we wanted, and then waited until four o'clock when all the owls had a period of sudden activity. The young came to the edge and tried their wings, hopping and flapping to and fro in the exposed part of the nest hole. The old bird, which had remained oblivious to the .bang of our Graflex shutter, finally aroused herself and crawled parrot-wise along a narrow ledge of the wall face. She soon settled herself again, however, and slept so soundly that only by frantieally flapping a foeusing eloth eould I even get her to open her eyes for a portrait. As the light grew too weak for photo- graphs we left her still asleep with her baek to the setting sun, the easiest sort of a target for even a stone.. Next morning the old bird sat dozing in a small oak near the nest, and only twenty feet from the ground. Her proteetive eoloration, notieeable at all limes, was partieularly so this morning as she sat in the oak. But whether she elung to the eliif, or sat elose against the mottled fir trunk, or in the spotted light and shade of the oak foliage, her harmonization was startlingly eomplete. Thi? morning she seemed so oblivious to my approaeh that I was eneouraged to elirob the oak where a limb gave standing room on a level with her. An insane idea it seemed, and yet she was so absolutely devoid of eommon sense