170 ao Nesting Time of Birds. [ ZOE 
screech owl ( Megascops asio bendirei) and shortly after the burrow- 
ing owl (.Speotyto cunicularia hypogea) and sparrow hawk ( Falco 
sparverius ). 
The eighth or tenth of the month has now been reached and the 
green-backed goldfinch (.Spinus psaltria) and Samuels’s song spar- 
row ( Melospiza fasciata samuelis) have begun nest building, or 
even, if the season be favorable, laid an egg or two. During the 
first half of April no other species are added, so that we have at 
this time breeding, all the hawks and owls (the smaller ones just 
commencing, the larger, for the most part, well along), the bush-tit 
and plain titmouse, the three species of hummingbirds, California 
jay, shrike, song sparrow and goldfinch. The two last named, how- 
ever, are hardly fully under way as yet. 
By the middle of the month, or shortly after this time, our list is 
extended by several new species. Brewer’s blackbird, which has 
been holding meetings in the top of some convenient cypress tree, 
and bowing and bobbing and scraping before the object of his ad- 
miration, has settled down to house-keeping. The California 
brown towhee (Pipilo fuscus crissalis ) and bicolored blackbird 
(Agelaius gubernator). follow soon after. The towhee breeds all 
through the month of May, but the sets recorded during the latter | 
part of this month and early in June are probably the second brood — 
of the season. Parkmann’s wren ( Troglodytes aedon parkmanii) 
and the red-shafted flicker ( Colaptes cafer) come next. on the list, 
followed closely by Gambel’s sparrow ( Zonotrichia gambeli). Thus 
far we have not gone beyond the twentieth of April, but already the 
summer migrants have begun nesting. The western lark finch 
( Chondestes grammacus strigatus), which arrives from the south 
about the fifteenth or twentieth of March, will have laid its full com- 
plement of eggs a month later. The house finch ( Carpodacus 
_mexicanus frontalis }, too, which has been carrying on an animated 
courtship for some time past begins to breed at about the same 
time. It’ is strange, too, that a bird which generally passes the 
winter with us in greater or less numbers, should not nest earlier, 
but they evidently plan to finish the family cares just when the 
fruit ripens, so that the young can be initiated into the mysteries of 
robbing orchards. note 
By the twenty-fifth of the month the warbling vireo ( Vireo gilvus) 
which arrived about the last of March, and the western chipping 
