320 BULLETIN 191, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



a piercing and rather frightful sound. The Clark Nutcracker proved 

 at last to be responsible, and he was only at play! The very next 

 morning after the mountain lion scare, we had the versatile birds as 

 musicians. Two of them got out their little toy trumpets, pitched 

 about a fifth apart, and proceeded to give us the Sierran reveille, 



hee hee hee, hee hee, 



hoo hoo hoo hoo [etc.]. The notes were really 



quite musical, and the comparison established of children's tin trumpets 

 was irresistible. The effect produced by the two birds sounding in 

 different keys was both pleasant and amusing. * * * The concert lasted 

 for two or three minutes." 



Decker and Bowles (1931) say that their incessant cries were heard 

 "during the entire time that they were up in the trees. They would 

 commence a little after daylight and we have never heard such a racket 

 from any other members of the animal kingdom. Besides innumerable 

 calls that must have belonged peculiarly to themselves they also included 

 every known call of the Magpie and the Crow that is uttered by either 

 the young or the old birds of those species. This last may be because 

 both adult and young of the year were present and all screaming at 

 the top of their lungs, making a din that at times grew extremely 

 tiresome and, indeed, almost unbearable. Oddly enough, when on or 

 near the ground they are absolutely silent." 



Field marks. — The nutcracker is a fairly large bird, between a small 

 crow and a large woodpecker in size. It has a long, sharp, black bill; 

 its head and body are pale gray ; its wings are black, with a large white 

 patch on the secondaries; and its tail is centrally black but largely 

 white laterally. Its behavior and its voice are distinctive, as explained 

 above. 



Winter. — "Although the Clark Nutcracker is a characteristic resident 

 of the Hudsonian Zone, it strays both above and below this belt. In 

 summer, after the broods of the year are fledged, some of the birds 

 move down the mountains. * ♦ * And at the same season they some- 

 times wander up over the rock-strewn ridge crests well above timber 

 line. Some of the nutcrackers which stray to the lower altitudes remain 

 there at least until early winter. * * * But most of the birds remain at 

 the normal high altitudes through the winter months" (Grinnell and 

 Storer, 1924). 



In addition to these altitudinal movements the nutcrackers do consid- 

 erable erratic wandering in winter, appearing unexpectedly at irregular 

 intervals in various small cities and towns, even near the coast, notably 

 in Monterey and Alameda Counties, Calif., where they become famil- 

 iar dooryard visitors. 



