the most of ten or eleven winters and have several times gone as high as 5,000 feet, but these higher ascents were only when there was but little snow. About the middle of November some years ago I was at the summit of the Central Pacific Railroad, altitude 7,000 feet. The ground was mostly bare and I saw only a few birds and fewer animals, the Little Chief hare being one of the latter. The reptiles and batrachians were sleeping their long annual sleep which covers fully two-thirds of the year at this height, and the sleep of the marmot and some of the small animals is nearly as long.
A few asters and Sidalcea were in flower in protected situations.
Summit is a good locality for making winter observations but when the snow is from ten to twenty feet deep, as it usually is in winter, snow-shoes would be a necessary part of the observer's outfit and snow-blindness must be guarded against. I hope this mere outline of my experiences in collecting will interest the young ornithologists of the Academy, and in closing will say that, owing largely to the good influence of the Stanford and State Universities, scientific study is now much better appreciated by the people of California than it was when I began, in my crude way, to study ornithology.
The Varied Thrush in Summer.
BY JOSEPH GRINNELL.
[Read before the Southern Division of the Cooper Orn. Club, Nov. 25, 1899.]
THE Varied Thrush (Hesperocichla nævia) is pre-eminently a bird of the West, being confined principally to the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California. It is a familiar winter visitant throughout the southern coast region, and here in Southern California it often appears in late fall in very large numbers in the foot-hills, feeding on the berries of the California holly. The summer home of this bird has been considered to be mainly north of the United States and chiefly within the heavily wooded Sitkan District, but ranging northward less commonly through the Yukon Valley. I found the Varied Thrush breeding in moderate numbers at Sitka, Alaska in the summer of '96. But I was rather surprised to find the species a much more numerous breeding bird in the Kowak Valley in northwestern Alaska, which is the extreme north of its range. In the spring of 1899 it appeared commonly in almost every tract of spruces, as near the coast of Kotzebue Sound as the first timber in the Kowak Delta, about ten miles east of Hotham Inlet. On May 28 I found it nest-building near upper timber-limit on the base of the Jade Mountains, on the northern border of the Kowak Valley and near the head of Hunt River.
At our winter camp which was located near the confluence of Hunt River and the Kowak, about miles east from the mouth of the latter, the first Varied Thrush arrived on the 21st of May, when the twanging notes of the males were heard several times during the morning and evening. The next day they had arrived in full force, and were to be seen and heard in every heavy stretch of woods. The snow had by this date nearly all disappeared, though the rivers and lakes were still covered with ice. Their food at this season consisted largely of wild cranberries and blueberries which were left from the previous summer's crop, and had been preserved under the winter snows. The birds were quite lively for members of the thrush tribe, which are usually of a quiet demeanor. When not feeding on the ground in one of the fruitful openings in the forest, they would be seen in wild pursuit of one another, either courting or quarrelling. The males were often seen in fierce combat, that is, fierce for a thrush. Of course some female ensconsed in a thick evergreen in the vicinity was the cause of the dispute. I never saw just how a quarrel would commence. The swift pursuit would follow a tortuous route, twisting among the close-standing trees and across openings, so rapidly as to be difficult to follow with the eye. The
