CALIFORNIA PURPLE FINCH 279 



feet out at the outer end of a limb of a large Douglas fir at the edge of 

 an open slashing. It was small but compact, and was built of twigs, 

 rootlets and usnea moss, slightly lined with gray plant fibres and a few 

 fine grasses." Mrs. Wheelock (1912) says: "HaK-way up the moun- 

 tains, at an altitude of from three thousand to five thousand feet, they 

 find suitable breeding grounds in the yellow pines, oaks, and redwoods. 

 The nest is built usually on a horizontal branch, and is composed of 

 wiry grass and fine rootlets woven into a shallow cup and lined with 

 wool or horsehair." William A. Cooper (1878), of Santa Cruz, Calif., 

 says of the nesting habits of this finch: "Favorite situations are the 

 tops of tall willows, alders, trees covered with cUmbing ivy, and hori- 

 zontal branches of redwoods." He gives the data for four nests, 

 presumably found near Santa Cruz. One "was placed on a horizontal 

 branch of an alder-tree, forty feet high, built on the top of a limb and 

 barely fastened to it." Another was "on one of the topmost branches 

 of an alder-tree fifty feet high." A third was "twenty feet from the 

 ground, in a thick bunch of willow sprouts." And the fourth was "on 

 a horizontal branch of an apple-tree," in an orchard. 



Eggs. — The measurements of 40 eggs average 19.9 by 14.5 milli- 

 meters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 22.2 by 14.2, 21.1 

 by 15.7, 18.3 by 14.0, and 19.1 by 1S.7 millimeters. 



Young. — Dawson (1923) says: "Two broods are probably brought off 

 in a season, the first about the 20th of May and the second a month or 

 so later. A sitting female outdoes a Siskin in her devotion to duty, 

 and not infrequently requires to be lifted from her eggs." The east- 

 ern purple finch apparently raises only one brood in a season. In all 

 other respects, the habits of the California purple finch seem to be 

 similar to those of its eastern relative. Its eggs are similar, the se- 

 quence of its molts and plumages is the same, it Uves on practically the 

 same kinds of food, sharing the enmity of the fruit growers in spite of 

 the harmful insects that it destroys, its voice is equally charming 

 and it does not differ from it in its general behavior. 



Distribution 



Range. — Southwestern British Columbia to Baja California and 

 Arizona. 



Breeding range. — The California purple finch breeds along the 

 Pacific coast from the Cascade Range and the west slope of the Sierra 

 Nevada westward, and from southwestern British Columbia (Comox, 

 Lillooet) south to southern coastal California (Alhambra) and through 

 mountains of interior southwestern California to northern Baja 

 California (Sierra Juarez); east in Washington to Naches Valley, and 

 in Oregon to Friend and Klamath Falls. 



