WILLIAMSON'S SAPSUOKEE. 99 



of the Post, and I had not proceeded more than half a mile from my house 

 when I saw two males chasing- each other about a dead pine stump, and utter- 

 ing at the same time shrill cries. These cries attracted ray attention to the 

 birds. I tried to get within ordinary shooting distance, but they took alarm 

 and flew in op[)Osite directions before I was near enough. Nevertlieless, I took 

 a snap shot at tlie one nearest to me; but it continued its flight, apparently unin- 

 jured, crossing the creek, about 60 yards in advance of me, which was too deep 

 and cold for me to ford, and, much to my disgust, disappeared in the heavier pine 

 timber on the opposite side, without stopping while it was in sight. As it was 

 useless as well as impracticable to follow this one, I kept on in the direction the 

 other had taken, but failed to see it again. Fully an hour afterwards, on my 

 way back to the Post, and when Avithin a few yards of the place where I 

 first noticed the two birds; tired out and disgusted, I sat down on an old log and 

 was taking a rest, absorbed in reflections on my bad luck, when, from quite a 

 distance, I noticed a black-looking bird flying toward me, coming from the 

 opposite side of the creek, and from the same direction the one I shot at had 

 taken earlier in the morning. Its flight was so peculiar and strange, constantly 

 sinking, that I refrained from shooting when it first came within range. No 

 wonder; it was its last expiring effort, and it actually di-opped A\'ithin a yard of 

 where I was sitting. It was unquestionably the very bird I had shot at more 

 than an hour before; no one else was out hunting at the time, as no other shots 

 were heard. A single No. 12 pellet had penetrated the lungs, and the bird, in 

 its dying struggle, had evidently tried to reach the same stump again on which 

 I first noticed it. 



My earliest' record for 1883, on which date I obtained a male specimen, 

 was March 20. It seems to me to be a more solitary bird than Spliyrapicus riiher. 

 I never saw more than two together or in close proximity of each other. It is 

 also more shy, and does not allow itself to be approached so readily as either of 

 the preceding species. Its breeding range extends, near Fort Klamadi, from an 

 altitude of about 5,000 feet to the higher peaks of the Cascade Range, which 

 attain in that vicinity a height of about 9,000 feet. On the mountain slojjes 

 about Crater Lake it seems to be most abundant, but not as much so as is Sphi/ra- 

 picus ruber in the lower valley, where almost every aspen grove harbors a pair 

 of these birds. 



Crater Lake itself is such a strangely interesting and unique freak of nature, 

 the peer in sublime grandeur of the Yosemite Valley, in California, and the 

 Yellowstone Park, with its grand canyons and geysers, in Wyoming, and so 

 little known withal, that I will give a short description of it as it appeared in 

 "The Auk:" "The lake is about 7^ miles long and 6 wide, and unlike anything 

 found in this or any other country. It is situated on the summit of the Cascade 

 Range, about 25 miles north of Fort Klamath, at an altitude of about 7,500 

 feet; the highest peak in the vicinity reaches up to 9,000 feet. The rocky walls 

 surrounding it on all sides are nowhere less than 1,000 feet and in places more 

 than 2,000 feet high, at many points almost perpendicular, so that a stone can 



