5a 
BLACK OR IRIDESCENT BLACK 413 
birds differ from the other California blackbirds in being 
found less often in the lowland marshes or tule swamps. 
Abundant throughout the State, they breed chiefly be- 
tween the highest altitudes and three thousand feet 
above sea level. Their choice of a building site is varied. 
In Lower California they have been found nesting in 
pine; in western Oregon they sometimes choose an old 
woodpecker’s hole one hundred feet from the ground ; 
while in the same State nests have been found on the 
ground, the rim being flush with the surface. At Del 
Monte a colony nested in the top of a group of tree 
yuccas, and at Tallac, on Lake Tahoe, I found them nest- 
ing on the rotten piles of an abandoned pier. In com- 
pany with them were tree swallows; and one pair of 
fearless feathered mites, known as pygmy nuthatches, 
had excavated a home in a leaning pile that towered 
above the rest. In a low, broken post that raised its 
crumbling top scarcely two feet from the water a mother 
Blackbird brooded day after day, entirely exposed to 
view, close to a pier where children played. Strangest 
of all, the post was the customary mooring place of a 
rowboat, the loop of rope being removed and replaced 
several times daily, and always rubbing the nest as it was 
passed over. Yet the mother bird refused to leave it, 
and only flattened her body and crouched in terror as 
the rope was lifted. After the little ones were hatched, 
June 8, her distress increased, for now a careless move 
of the boatman might easily overthrow them into the 
water. One or other of the anxious parents sat on a 
splintered point of the post just over the nest and 
