THE CALAVERAS WARBLER. “77 
you are seized, as like as not, with a sense of low birth, and feel like retiring 
in confusion lest you offend royalty. 
These gentle despots are bound for the mountains; and since their 
realms are not prepared for them till June, they have ample leisure to discuss 
the fare of wayside stations. They enter the State from the South during 
the last week in April—Wallula, April 23d, is my earliest record; but May 
2ist records an unanxious company at the foot of Lake Chelan. As the 
season advances they take up quarters on brushy mountain sides, or in the 
deciduous skirts of fierce mountain torrents. Here while the female skurries 
about thru the buck-brush or vine-maple thickets in search of a suitable 
nesting site, the male mounts a fir tree and occupies himself with song. 
If you are spying on this sacred function, the bird first peers down at 
you uneasily, then throws his head back and sings with great animation: 
Choopy, choopy, choopy churr (tr). The trill is composed of a dozen or 
so of large notes which the ear can easily distinguish, but which because of 
the vivacious utterance one cannot quite count. The pitch of the fale is 
sustained, but there is a slight decrease in volume. If forced to descend, 
the singer will join his mate in sharp chips of protest, somewhat similar to 
those of the Audubon Warbler, altho not quite so clear-cut or inflexible. 
While the Calaveras Warbler is a bird of the mountains and lives at 
any height where suitable cover is afforded, it is a curious fact that it some- 
times prefers the timbered lowlands of Puget Sound, and may be found in 
some seasons in considerable numbers about the southern prairies. Mr. 
Bowles has found them commonly in scrub-oak patches which border the 
fir groves and timbered lakes; and yet during some years they have been 
unaccountably absent from the entire region. 
Near Tacoma this Warbler places its nest at the base of a young oak 
or fir tree, where the spreading branches have protected the grass and gath- 
ered weeds. ‘The nest is sunk well into the ground or moss, and is so well 
concealed as to defy discovery unless the bird is flushed. When frightened 
from the nest the female instantly disappears, and returns only after some 
considerable interval. ‘Then she approaches with the greatest caution, ready 
to dart away again upon the first sign of movement on the part of the in- 
truder. The male, if he happens to be about at all, neither joins the defense 
nor consoles his mate in misfortune, but sets upon her furiously and drives 
her from bush to bush, as tho she had wilfully deserted their treasures. 
At sea-level two sets of eggs are laid in a season, one fresh about May 
18th, the other about June 25th. In the mountains, however, the second 
nesting, if indulged in at all, is thrown very late. I took a set of three fresh 
eggs from a carelessly constructed nest placed in the top of an elk-weed 
(Echinopanax horridum) at a height of three feet, on the 22d day of 
July, 1900. 
