This page needs to be proofread.

Mar., 1917 BIRDS OF THI? HUMID COAST 49 edge of the nest almost ready to fly--no wonder the father sang with a deep note of home happiness l But the next day the nest was empty, the restless youngsters had flown, and remembering a bunch of brown feathers found on the walk one morning, I feared that anxious days were in store for the fond parents. While the Thrushes were familiar companions, other feathered neighbors were seen only in passing. An Audubon Warbler stopped to sing near the house the latter part of June, as xf its family cares were over, while a pair of Barn Swallows that were discovered sitting around were perhaps prospecting. for another year. A Bald Eagle seen by the fisherman flying over the house the last 6f June was probably on its way to or from its fishing grounds. In the forest thicket a stone's throw from the house, fleeting glimpses of the bob tail of a Western Winter Wren and outbursts of wrennish song from dark impene- trable interiors had put me into a very exasperated state of mind; but one morning when the jol.ly little jumble was heard, from the doorstep I looked up to discover a mite of a bird on the tip of a hundred foot stub across the clearing --a fly on a mast! Through the glass I could make out his plump little form and bob tail and see him raise his head and move his throat as he sang his rapid round. There he was at last, no wraith, but a flesh and blood wrenkin. From the front porch the familiar song of the Wren-Tit was occasionally heard coming from the burned oYer, chaparral covered, mountain slope above, a slope that from our distance below looked an open easy climb, but was so densely covered with high salal, brake, and salmonberry bushes that one could just about see a man's head above the thicket--quite the kind of place a Wren- Tit likes. The hunter of the family was ?Tatching the slope carefully now as he was planning a bear hunt in the mountains and a she bear and two cubs had been seen there not many months before. It would do no good to watch the slope for my bird, much as I longed to see it again, but its familiar strain, keep, keep, keep-it, keep-it, keep-it, reiterated with variations, was always lis- tened to with keen delight, recalling as it did charmed days in beautiful Cali- fornia. The last of June, only a few days before I left for the Cascades, on go- ing to the front door after breakfast I ?vas surprised and delighted to hear the familiar keep-keep-keep'r'r'r'r'r'r of Chamaea close at hand, and a moment later its purring note came from some brush only two or three rods away, fol- lowed quickly by the appearance of the delectable brown Wren-like form twitching its long tail from side to side so vehemently that it almost tipped over. Here it was at last at my very door! That same week a Junco that I had been looking for ever since my arrival, probably also wandering after the breeding season, came to my door, staying on a log long enough for me to see its black head, dull brown back and pinkish sides. Suggestive trills and aggravating flashes of white tail feathers were finally followed by the sight of a pair of the birds busied among the brush and logs of an old burn. One more bird which I had vainly tried to place in the heavy timber came to the dooryard just before I left--the lovely little Siskin from the mountains--lighting on top of a low hemlock and letting me walk around close under him so that I could see his brown streaked body as he sang his song, suggesting that of the Goldfinch with an added tang that makes it sweet wild music to the ear of the mountain lover. From the front piazza the morning and evening concerts could be enjoyed to the full. And in the medley by listening closely the indescribable split note