310 LAND BIRDS 
- Breeding Season : May to August. 
Nest: In low trees and bushes, sometimes near or on the ground ; made 
of grasses, moss, and rootlets; plastered with mud, and lined with 
fine grass. 
Eggs: 4; turquoise blue. 
Tue Western Robin, although like his Eastern repre- 
sentative in coloring, is quite unlike him in_ habits. 
Instead of building his nest near the homes of men, he 
goes up into the lonely Sierra Nevada forests ; there I 
have found it containing two blue eggs, when snow four 
feet deep lay a hundred yards away. 
All through the spring and summer he remains in the 
high altitudes of the Sierra Nevada, breeding along the 
crest of this range as far south as the San Bernardino 
mountains, but with the cold days of the fall he starts 
on his vertical migration to the lowlands. In the win- 
ter this species occurs nearly throughout the State ; but, 
as all birds sing best at the mating season, he is almost 
silent when in the valleys, and seems quite a different 
bird from the cheery “ Robin Redbreast ”’ who picks up 
crumbs in our dooryards. 
The nests also of the Western Robins that I have 
found have been somewhat different from those of the 
Jastern bird and very much prettier, being decorated 
with moss woven in the mud instead of straw, and care- 
fully lined with moss. It is really a beautiful structure, 
with the mud_ practically concealed from view. The 
eggs of the two species are alike, and the newly hatched 
young are the same naked, wriggling, skinny nestlings 
in both cases. In both cases, also, I affirm that they are 
fed by regurgitation for the first four days, the adult 
