138 THe NUTTALL SPARROW, 
a friend but should certainly ridicule in 
a stranger. We are humbled in view of 
the vocal limitations of this bird when 
we recall that the voice of the White- 
crowned Sparrow (Z. leucophrys), of 
which ours is a local race, is noted for 
its sweet, pure quality. Surely our bird 
has caught a bad cold. 
In selecting a nesting site, the Nuttall 
displays a marked difference of taste 
from the Rusty Song Sparrow, in that 
it selects a dry situation. ‘The first nest, 
prepared during the third week in April, 
is almost invariably built upon the 
ground. A slight hollow is scratched at 
the base of a bush or sapling, and a 
rather pretentious structure of bark strips, 
dried grasses and rootlets is reared, with 
a lining of fine grass and horse-hair. A 
nest found on Flat-top was set in high 
grass at the foot of a tiny oak sapling, 
and was composed externally of dried 
yarrow leaves with a few coarse grasses; 
internally of fine coiled grass of a very 
light color, supplemented by four or five 
Taken in Seattle. Photo by the Author. é 2 7 a 
Gay Ne RaRIEART. a GO RRIONE. white gull feathers. he eggs, four o1 
five in number, are of a handsome light 
green or bluish green shade, and are heavily dotted, spotted, or blotched 
with reddish brown. 
A second set is prepared a month or so later than the first, and occa- 
sionally a third. Second nests are built, as likely as not, in bushes or trees; 
and Mr. Bowles has taken them as high as twenty-five feet from the ground. 
Young birds lack the parti-colored head-stripes of the adult, altho the 
pattern is sketched in browns; and they are best identified by the unfailing 
solicitude of the parents, which attends their every movement. ‘They are 
rather bumptious little creatures for all; a company of them romping about 
a pasture fence brings a wholesome recollection of school-boy days, and there 
are girls among them, too, for my! how they giggle! 
