184 THE AUDUBON WARBLER. 
in height, while the Junco held a station even higher on the tip of another fir a 
block away. Here they had it back and forth, with honors surprisingly even, 
until both were tired, whereupon (and not till then) an Oregon Towhee ven- 
tured to bring forth his prosy rattle. It was like Sambo and his ‘‘bones”’ after 
an opera. 
The range of Audubon’s Warbler is about coextensive with that of ever- 
green timber in Washington. It does not, however, frequent all the more open 
pine woods of the lower foot-hills in the eastern part of the State, nor does it 
occur habitually in the deeper solitudes of the western forests. Considered 
altitudinally, its range extends from sea-level to timber-line. And altho it is at 
home in the highest mountains, it is equally so in the city park and in the shade 
trees about the house. Under such varied conditions, therefore, its habits 
must vary widely. 
We do not know to what extent it is resident, that is, present the year 
around, but believe that it is quite extensively so. One may be in the woods 
for a dull week in January, and see never a Warbler; but on a bright day in 
the same region he may encounter numbers of them. | have seen them playing 
about the dense firs on Semiahmoo Point (Lat. 49°) on Christmas Day, and I 
feel sure that large numbers of them spend the winter in the tree-tops, possibly 
moping, after the well known fashion of the Sooty Grouse. 
It is these winter residents which become active in early spring. In the 
vicinity of Tacoma, where they have been studied most carefully, it is found 
that April is the typical nesting month, and one at least of the four eggs of a 
nest found April 9th, 1905, must have been deposited in March. Along about 
the 25th of April great numbers of Audubons arrive from the South, and one 
may see indolent companies of them lounging thru the trees, while resident 
birds are busy feeding young. These migrants may be destined for our own 
mountains as well as British Columbia. East-side birds are likewise tardy in 
arrival, for pine trees are inadequate shelter for wintry experiments. 
The absorbing duty of springtime is nesting, and to this art the Audubons 
give themselves with becoming ardor. ‘The female does the work, while the 
male cheers her with song, and not infrequently trails about after her, useless 
but sympathetic. Into a certain tidy grove near Tacoma the bird-man entered 
one crisp morning in April. The trees stood about like decorous candlesticks, 
but the place hummed with Kinglets and clattered with Juncoes and Audubons. 
One Audubon, a female, advertised her business to all comers. I saw her, up- 
on the ground, wrestling with a large white chicken-feather, and sputtering ex- 
citedly between tussles. The feather was evidently too big or too stiff or too 
wet for her proper taste; but finally she flew away across the grove with it, 
chirping merrily. And since she repeated her precise course three times, it was 
an easy matter to trace her some fifteen rods straight to her nest, forty feet up 
on an ascending fir branch. 
