AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY 117 



of his parents, but if this was a first flight, as it had every 

 appearance of being, it was a very remarkable Performance. 



I watched for several days another nest where the male behaved 

 in a quite difTerent manner from all the others I had seen. His 

 nest was beneath a limb of a dead pine, on the shore of Lake 

 Tahoe, which still retained most of its limbs and was only about 

 thirty feet up. This male seemed to spend his entire time on 

 guard, sitting on a limb very near the hole, and constantly 

 uttering a soft monosyllable quite unlike the call to the young. 

 As I approached he took up the usual rattling alarm cry and 

 hopped up and down the trunk, but when I kept still he soon 

 returned to his position of devoted sentinel. About every hour 

 he left for a short time, but soon returned with a temptirig 

 morsel which he first prepared on the top of a broken limb and 

 then went into the hole with it. Once he came out precipitately 

 still holding the second portion in his bill. He sat, looking un- 

 comfortable for about five minutes and then went to the hole 

 again, when his offering was accepted. Interpreted his actions as 

 showing that his mate was sitting within while he kept guard, 

 for if he had young he would have fed them much oftener, and 

 both birds would have been so occupicd. 



I am sorry not to be able to give the sequel to this story, but 

 after a week of watching, all signs of life disappeared from the 

 tree. Whether they deserted their nest, or the brilliant male feil 

 a prey to the shotgun of some collector, I shall never know. 

 I once watched a family of young with their parents making the 

 rounds of the scattered fir trees. When they came to a tall stub 

 in which was a hole near the top which they may very likely 

 have occupied formerly, they peeped into the hole. The amaze- 

 ment with which it started back on seeing the beak aud eyes of 

 a nearly füll grown Sparrow-Hawk was comical. One look did 

 not satisfy it, and the family lingered so long about the stub 

 that I expected to see a battle royal when the present tenants 

 returned, but no, the Hawks were not aggressive and the wood- 

 peckers put in no claim. These birds sometimes collect in large 

 fiocks, chiefly composed of young birds and then one can hardly 

 help mistaking them for Crows, as they forage for grasshoppers 

 in the meadows tili suddenly one alights in true woodpecker 

 attitude on a fence post and you see plainly his crimson face 

 and gray throat and collar. Then it is impossible to mistake him 

 for any other bird. axxa Head. 



