Nesting of Hylocichla aonalaschke auduboni in the Sierra Nevadas.
BY LYMAN BELDING, STOCKTON CAL.
[Read before the Northern Division of the Cooper Orn. Club, Mar. 4, 1899.]
THIS is the bird I named Turdus sequoiensis a few years ago, but as I neglected to send enough specimens to the Committee of the A. O. U. to convince them it was worthy of a new name, they finally "considered it to be identical with the Audubon's Hermit Thrush of the Rocky Mountains," and I suppose it so stands at present. By any other name it would sing just as sweetly.
It is the finest song bird of the Pacific Coast, breeding in many localities in the Sierras, on both slopes, usually choosing damp, densely-wooded localities for a summer home. It begins to sing about the middle of May at 5,000 feet altitude, below which it is seldom found in summer, and sings until about the first of September, when it leaves for warmer regions.
Altogether I have found seven nests of this bird; all of them were within a few feet of paths. They were mostly well-concealed, but one was the reverse, having been saddled on a fallen, dead, barkless fir sapling, with nothing to hide it except a few dead and leafless twigs. This nest contained four young which were quite fit to leave the nest about the middle of June. The eggs appear to be four or less. Three of the nests were in yew trees (Taxus), one was in a hazel bush (Corylus) and two were in deer brush (Ceanothus). The highest was about ten feet from the ground and the lowest about three feet. There was more or less moss (Hypnum) in all of the nests though the materials used in them varied considerably.
I hope this information will help ornithologists to find a few eggs of this very interesting bird and that they will forever afterward refrain from molesting this charming songster, to which I am indebted for many, many happy hours. Two photographs of one nest were kindly taken at my request, in 1898, but Mr. L. E. Hunt of Berkeley, Cal. The nest represented was built on a fallen cone of a sugar pine (P. lambertiana) which had lodged in a deer brush.
A Day With the Raptores.
BY ERNEST ADAMS, SAN JOSE, CAL.
[Read before the Northern Division of the Cooper Orn. Club, Mar. 4, .]
JUST as the messengers of Old Sol were speeding away toward the beautiful Santa Clara Valley, on the morning of April 12, 1898, I was urging my pony up the gentle grade toward Mt. Hamilton. Why I had decided to go in that direction I could not tell; I could not boast of Buteos I had taken in that vicinity, nor of Bubos, and when the thought of seeing eggs of the Golden Eagle in situ entered my head I cast it out, declaring that it belonged to only such fellows as Barlow and Taylor. I had grown careless of late; my Kites had failed me, my favorite grove for collecting eggs of the smaller birds had been cut down, and now my destination was perhaps as good as any I had in mind, though it was quite probable that Beck had been over the same ground only a short time before. And right here let me say if there is anyone who hopes to find his first egg of Aquila chrysætos, he must beware of this collector whose climbers mark many a tree east of here! I had to learn the lesson once though it cost me a fine set. I will not say how long I continued my delightful ride before hitching my horse and starting over the hills on foot, for that is one of those secrets that only oologists have.
April 18, 1896 I had removed from a newly constructed nest only ten feet in a small oak, one egg of a Western Red-tail, advanced in incubation. On April 13, 1897 a friend found two young Horned Owls in this same nest and I was hoping to find the old bird there this year, but you can imagine my sur-
