ALBI= LAND BIRDS 
purple that at once attracts attention as he sits sunning 
himself on a low twig. He is abundant throughout 
Southern California, but especially so at Tia Juana on 
the Mexican border and from there to San Diego, among 
the hills back from the coast. No very definite breeding 
range can be given him, for he is a capricious little 
creature, abundant in one locality and rare or unknown 
in another that seems in climate and surroundings to be 
identical with the 
one he has chosen. 
Whether in the low 
hot valleys about 
the Colorado Des- 
ert, or in the Se- 
quoia National Park 
at an altitude of 
429. BLACK-CHINNED =e ; 
HuMMINGBIRD. "4 nine thousand feet, 
“Tit daintily a few inches 3 he builds his home 
away.”’ “1: 
and rears his young 
in gay indifference to climatic conditions. Nor does he 
seem to have any especial favorites among the flowers ; 
and this, I believe, is because his food is so largely insects. 
I have found him hovering over the bells of the Yucca 
more frequently than anywhere else, though at Tia 
Juana he was darting into the blossoms of the species 
of cactus so commonly domesticated by the Mexicans 
and used to brew a native drink. On one of these low 
plants a pair had built their nest in a crotch of the 
prickly leaves. It was composed of buffy plant down 
and covered with webs and something that looked lke 
