198 THE CONDOR Vol. XV Haeraatopus ostralegus. Oystercatcher. The eggs of this species vary in ground color from very light stone grey, cream, clay, light buff, medium buff and dark buff, to a good dark brown, spotted, blotched and streaked with blackish brown, occasionally medium brown, and ex- ceptionally a very light yellow brown, and always with underlying markings of gray. Many eggs are finely streaked without any spots, while others have streaks and blotches combined, and large blotches of gray; others again have medium sized spots evenly distributed. The gray on these eggs is not the usual violet gray common to the Limicolae, but a deeper blue-black gray, sixnilar to the color left by a blot of ink on white blotting paper. I know of no other eggs of the Linlicolae that have this same shade of gray. The eggs have little gloss. The number of eggs is normally 3 but I have several times found sets of 4, and have heard of many others. These eggs vary greatly in size, from 2.55 x 1.75 to 2.1o x 1.5o inches; average measurements: 2.2 x 1.50. Eggs ovate in shape. I have noticed that Ridgway, say in the phalaropes, gives 3 to 4 as the normal set of eggs, and also in other species. Surely it is common knowledge that the bulk of the Limicolae lay 4 eggs, and it would have been far better to have given the names of those species that normally lay less than this number, than to gen- eralize as he does in his introduction to the Scolopacidae--eggs 2-4. SOME FURTHER NOTES ON SIERRAN FIELD-WORK By MILTON S. RAY T WAS on the ninth of June, I91o, that Mr. Hev. ry W. Carriger and the writ- er gained the Forni Meadow at .the base of Pyramid Peak. inasmuch as Messrs. Barlow and Atkinson, exactly ten years before, investigated the aviait possibilities of this region, a comparison of the joint findings may prove of inter- est. Our predecessors recorded twenty-five species of which we located all but three, the Hermit Warbler, Western Warbling Vireo and Pigmy Nuthatch. Car- riger and I listed 36 species, and to an earlier summer and ever shifting distri- bution during migration, I attribute the cause of this more extended list. Mr. Barlow records two nests of the Mountain Chickadee, one ?:ewly built, and one with eight fresk eggs. We also found a number of the nests of this species, but they all held small young. As Mr. Barlow records his Tachycineta with a question mark I may state all we noted were T. bicolor. Like Barlow we found no Sierra Grouse at Forni's above 60oo feet, but in similar country, north- west of Phillips' Station on June 12 we encountered a pair at an altitude of 8,500 feet. Mr. Barlow, speaking of the White-crowned Sparrow, says*: "On June lO these sparrows were evidently waiting for nest building which was impracticable until the bushes should become in leaf." I may add in this connection that of about twenty nests of this bird that I have found at various altitudes in the high Sierras three-fourths have been placed on the ground and the balance in the thick evergreen lodgepole pine saplings. Of the ground-nests many were not depend- ent on foliage for concealment, being hidden by dead branches or concealed at the
- Condor, II, 1900, p. 107.
