hardly half a mile away on either side, with San Nicholas and Santa Barbara Islands in plain view in the distance. In some spots a stumble would have meant a sudden and permanent loss of interest in ornithological affairs, to put it mildly.
The main ranch, or Laplaya, is situated in a pleasant valley three miles north of Prisoner's Harbor, being connected with it by a wagon road along the bottom of the creek. The buildings face a magnificent range of volcanic mountains which are broken and rugged in the extreme. At this place birds were more numerous than at any other spot on the island. Here in the creek bottom were groves of very fine liveoaks with a small stream of water running through them, and many birds came down from the almost perpendicular hillsides to feed and drink here. Back of the buildings a range of impenetrable chaparral extended for miles, with here and there a trail cut through for driving sheep. This range is so steep and brushy that even with twenty experienced vaqueros only about one-half of the sheep occupying it are ever shorn and there are thousands of these animals roaming around with one, two or three years' fleeces on their backs, their long tails flapping behind them as they run, in a most comical manner. In this chaparral birds were very scarce, but along the edges were many Jays and a few Bush Tits, Dusky Warblers, Western Chipping Sparrows and Oregon ? Towhees, these latter so wild as to be unapproachable. Among the liveoaks, however, birds were numerous and an early morning tramp with a good deal of patience thrown in would generally be rewarded, though a dozen birds actually in one's hand by ten o'clock would be a pretty fair record, as it was not only difficult to get shots at what one wanted but also frequently more difficult to retrieve the game.
Dusky Warblers, Vigor's ? Wrens and many of the commoner birds already mentioned could be heard and often seen along the steep sides of the canon and to a certain extent among the big trees in the bottom also. In these thick live-oaks it was very hard to get shots at the small birds and many dropped only to lodge in some indiscernible or inaccessible bunch of leaves. In this locality the Santa Cruz Jay was very abundant and bold. Many were shot with the auxiliary barrel, being too dose to use a larger charge. In some particular trees these birds would at times be very numerous, flying singly, by twos or threes, and then again hours might pass without a Jay being seen. Every accessible bush and tree within two or three miles of Laplaya was carefully searched for their nests, but, while many old ones were discovered, only five were found occupied. Two of these contained eggs, one set of three eggs and one set of four; two contained young, two fledglings in one nest and three in the other, while the fifth nest was placed near the end of a long slim branch of a large live-oak, with no means of reaching it. From the small proportion of new nests to old ones discovered, it would seem that either the birds were not breeding to any extent this year on account of the severe drouth perhaps, or else nests when once built must last in that locality about 100 years before disintegrating.
The Dusky Warblers and Vigor's ? Wrens were evidently breeding everywhere, but no nests were found and it is a mystery where the former found a place to build, as the sheep had cut everything clean from off the ground and as high up as they could reach on the bushes during the rainless spring. There did not seem to be any protected spots on the ground where these birds could hide their nests in security among low vines or ferns as is their usual custom. Occasional flocks of White-throated Swifts (Aeronautes melanoleucus) would descend from their homes in the mountain fastnesses and circle high in air over Laplaya, but only one specimen was obtained and their breeding place remained undiscovered. Shrikes were numerous in this vicinity and contrary to the evidence given in the July Auk, were not really wild. A few were lost by my not using a sufficiently heavy charge in my desire to preserve the plumage as intact as possible, but many of the specimens shot fell into the large piles of dead brush which
