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98 THI? CONDOR Vol. XVllI immediate. ly applied, and now the General smokes his after-breakfast cigar in peace and comfort. This is, as I say, the most persistent bird of which I have record, but sev- eral other cases have come under observation. For two years an Anthony Towhee has started the same performance on my own garage window in Pasa- dena, but in these instances the bird was less deterrained, and within a week or so abandoned the attempt of his own accord. In the same way individuals have formed the habit at the Pierpont Cottages, in the Ojai. There ]?ave been at least three different cases since 1911, when I have happened to be there, but these birds, also, gave up the attempt after a comparatively short trial. On two other occasions friends have told me of biTds which had an obsession for "getting into a certain room of their house". On investigation these also proved to be Anthony Towhees, which had not the slightest burglarious intent, Fig. 32. SCRATCHING ABOUT AMONG THE DRY GRA?S STE.?IS AND DEAD LEAVES AFTER THE FASHION OF HIS M.4CUL.4 TUS KINDRED. but were merely employed in this strange phase of rival conquest. The habit is not entirely restricted to Towhees, since I have seen two in- stances of California Linnets attempting the same thing. That even our West- ern Mocker is sometimes tricked into this same waste of time and strength seems certain from the statement of Mr. Sylvanus Tyler, of Pasadena. His in- terest in birds for many years makes him an accurate observer, and he assures me that a Western Mocker attacked a window across the street from his home with tremendous fury and daily persistence one spring. It was finally found dead under the window, and as there was no mark on the bird, death was pre- sumably caused by the continued shock of the glass upon its beak. The habit appears so much more common, however, with Pipilo, that one is jusCf?ed in taking him as the exemplification of this strange perversion of