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14 TH E CONDOR Vol. X1X in the forenoon of one of those bright, exquisite days of early spring at Lake Tahoe, when the warring elements had declared a truce and were at rest for a time. The little shadowy canyon wherein I rested enjoyed a hushed and sol- emn tranquility not diminished, but rather added to, by a drowsy murmuring from .a bright brook splashing on its way to the lake. This, I thought, could be none other than the haunt of a Soli.taire, and I wished that I might see the bird; and as in answer to my prayer came one, a small gray ghost of a bird that flitted silently in and out the leafy corridors of its retreat, finally resting on the limb of a pine not ten feet axvay. And as I w. atched, the feathers of his breast and throat rose with a song that softly echoed the beautiful voices of the .brook, the gurgling of eddies, the silvery tinkle of tiny cascades, and the deeper medley of miniature falls. Infiritely fine and sweet was this render- ing of mountain music. At times the song of the bird rose above the sound of the water in rippling cadences not shrill, but in an infitfite number of runs and modulated trills, dying away again and again to low plaintive whispering notes suggestive of tender memories. I know of no bird song with which it can be compared except that of the Water Ousel. But the song of the Ousel is sung to the accompaniment of wilder waters; nothing less than the raging thunder- ing cataracts of larger streams will do for him. Another memorable occasion was at' daybreak, after an interminable night without blankets at a high altitude. The great summit peaks of the Sierras, distinct against the western sky, had just begun to glow with the first delicate rose-tints of the dawn, while the forest mantling their granite flanks stood misty and somber and still above dead banks of snow. Suddenly, breaking the silence, came faintly the notes of a Solitaire, growing stronger with the light like the first low tentative laughter of a little alpine streamlet set free from ice. The same sweet notes that I remembered, clear as the drip from icicles, as spontaneous as the songs of mountain streams. Sunny open glades in the woods, rather than the more secure shelter of dense forests, are usually selected by the Townsend Solitaire (Myadestes town- sendi) for nesting purposes. Five nests which I have examined were thus sit- uated in open or thinly forested areas surrounded by very dense woods, and were found more by accident than design, the birds flushing as I passed by. Their behavior when thus disturbed is in harmony with their quiet disposition; by their actions they show a tender solicitude, but not one of the five pairs of birds, when I was in the vicinity of their nests, uttered a single note of com- plaint or acted as if in great distress or fear. The data of these nests are as folloxvs: About the first of June, 1905, I was exploring a ridge above the Feather River in Plumas County, at 4000 feet alti- tude, when a Solitaire flew from behind a charred stub. This, on examination was found to be partly burnt out, formi?g a semi-circular cavity. Within this shelter a depression had evidently been scratched in the ground, in which was a great loose mass of pine needles, the interior being lined with dry grass stems. The nest contained four fresh eggs. Again on June 10, 1908, at Fyffe, 3700 feet a!titude, a nest was found eigh- teen inches up in a crevice of a charred oak log in the open forest. In construc- tion it was about like the first nest, the bulk of the material being pine needles, the lining of grass stems. The contents were four half fledged young. July 9th of the same year another nest was discovered, in a peculiar situation on a small ledge of rock projecting from a high cliff, in Franktown Creek Canyon,