Page:Condor12(4).djvu/15

july, 1910 NOTES ON THE RUIFOUS-CROWNED SPARROW 125 or done any other foolish stunts. Dreams of skunks and other "varmints" following Taggart's tracks and eating the eggs filled my head that night; but all eventually turned out well, and to make a long story short, I got the female bird, nest and eggs, and Emerson took photographs of the whole outfit. The bird was seen leaving the nest, and was collected right then. The nest was a poor affair--simply a few dry grasses were arranged on one side and part of the bottom of an irregular hole on the edge of a bank along the side of a small gully. The eggs rested upon the earth with a few grasses crost between, and a small sage sheltered the nest from the sun. The lateness of the date, July 8, 1908, angered well for incubated eggs, but we were glad to find these perfectly fresh. They were three in number, glassy white with no trace of the bluish color spoken of by some writers, tho slightly pinl? before blowing. The eggs are now in the writer's collection, and are prized the most of all the shells to be found there. THE ANNA HUMMINGBIRD By J. H. BOWLES UMBER one on my list of "birds seen at Santa Barbara" is the Anna Hum- mingbird (Calypte anna), a splendid male noted on November 17, 1909. Accustomed as I was to the much smaller hummers of the north, and to the Ruby-throated Hummingbird of the New England states, this large and handsome species became at once of the greatest interest to me and I determined to make an especial study of it. Altho most numerous during the winter months, the Anna Hummers are very plentiful at all seasons, being the commonest member of their family in this portion of southern California. A friend who has a large flowering shrub on his estate as- sured me that he had seen more than forty of these hummers feeding at one time among its blossoms, and indeed in many such localities one might shut his eyes and believe himself to be surrounded by a swarm of giant bees. All hummingbirds seem possest with the most irascible dispositions, and Anna is very far from being an exception to the rule. The females are, if possible, more pugnacious than the males, and nothing seems to give them greater pleasure than to pick a quarrel with some other bird, preferably of their own kind, altho anything with two wings is acceptable. It is a most amusing experience to sit near the nest of some such bird as the Parkman Wren, whose loud complaints at your intrusion have attracted numerous of her sympathetic arian neighbors. Presently an Anna will whiz upon the scene and at once start in on a systematic campain against every bird in the immediate vicinity. On one occasion I notist a female making repeated dives into the center of a large wild rose bush, and an examination showed a four-foot corral snake to be the cause. Upon killing the snake I found him to have been gilty of nothing more reprehensible than eating a lizard, so throwing him on the ground I moved a short distance away to see what the hummer would do. She had been watching from the top of a neighboring live oak, and almost immediately darted down and hovered over her enemy, gradually dropping closer until she was within a foot of him. Her head was bent far down and here extreme caution, in markt contrast to the rough and tumble tactics usually employed, showed how fully she appreciated her