the last half of July and the entire month of August, with various others of 
their kind they may be found flitting about the buildings, or even coming 
within the yard and up to the very doorsteps, their bright black eyes carefully 
searching every inch of ground for morsels of food. In spring these birds 
attain their breeding plumage by the wearing away of the grayish tips. . . . 
In the north, before taking leave for their winter home, they gather in flocks 
on the bushy borders of the woods, and their low, sweet chorus is heard 
rising and falling as they tune their gentle pipes for the songs they are to 
utter later in the season. This bird’s power of song, however, is not great, 
and its music is, perhaps, most pleasing when thus heard in chorus. 
The snow-bird (Jiuico) also breeds abundantly all along the 
Yukon and its tributary valleys. “The slate-colored junco and the 
western chipping sparrow,” remarks Dr. Bishop, speaking of the 
region about Fort Yukon, “were most common about the brush- 
heaps left by the lumbermen, weed-grown clearings resulting from 
forest-fires, and about cabins or the towns. Every nest found was 
sunk in the ground to the rim in an open place under a weed or a 
tussock of grass.” 
None of the varieties of the song sparrow goes so far north; but 
its place is taken by Lincoln’s sparrow, whose habits are similar, 
and whose delightful singing is heard all over the wooded interior. 
The fox sparrow, too, regales the ear in summer wherever trees or 
bushes grow. 
Both the cliff and the barn swallows cheer the hearts of the 
people in towns, as well as the residents in lonely miners’ and pros¬ 
pectors’ cabins scattered through the mountains, placing their nests 
confidingly under roofs as soon as these are provided for them; yet 
many colonies of both species inhabit the wild cliff's. The tree 
swallows, nesting in abandoned woodpecker-holes, and in hollow 
stubs, are regular summer visitors, along with the violet-green and 
the bank swallows; the violet-green species customarily nests in 
the cliffs, but Dr. Bishop records that several times he saw it entering 
tunnels resembling those of bank swallows, great numbers of whose 
burrows pitted the earthen banks along the Yukon. 
The Bohemian waxwing is a resident of northern Alaska, where 
the first nest and eggs on record were obtained at Fort Yukon in 
1861 by Robert Kennicott. This nest was placed in a spruce growing 
at the edge of a swamp, and both it and the eggs much resembled 
those of the familiar cedar-bird. Bishop furnished an interesting note 
on this bird : 
I'wo males that we noticed wdiile descending Thirty-Mile River were 
perched on the topmost sprays of tall spruces, uttering a lisping whistle at 
frequent intervals. One of them flew after a passing insect in the manner 
of a flycatcher. Flocks were easily approached, and when one bird was 
shot the rest would scatter, and each would alight on the top branch of some 
spruce and utter a characteristic call-note. This note, which we often hear 
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