68 Muneo, Birds of the Okanagan Valley. [j" n 



May 22, 1917. A large, bulky nest of sticks lined with black tree-moss 

 (Alectoria jubata) and some down from the birds' breasts; forty feet from 

 the ground in a tall Douglas fir, free of branches for the first twenty-five 

 feet . This was in open woods of Douglas fir and yellow pine, overlooking a 

 small creek and a wide area of hay land. The three partly incubated eggs 

 were chalky-white, sparingly blotched with pale brown. Both birds 

 alighted in nearby trees and did not fly over the nest or make any hostile 

 swoops at the collector. 



May 28, 1917. Nest twenty-two inches in diameter, made of spruce 

 sticks and lined with spruce twigs and pale green tree-moss or lichen 

 (Evernia vuljrina). This was at the top of a spruce, broken off, sixty feet 

 from the ground. The rather heavy spruce sticks composing it rested on 

 the broken portion of the tree and on the thick limbs directly below. The 

 spruce was a solitary one, at the edge of a cotton wood forest, bordering a 

 stream and pasture land, in a deep, narrow valley. There were two eggs, 

 in an advanced stage of incubation; one was nearly pure white and the 

 other faintly blotched with light, brown. The male had been shot two 

 weeks before. While the tree was being climbed, the female sat in a cot- 

 tonwood forty yards away and screamed repeatedly but did not come 

 any closer to the nest. 



The following notes refer to a pair of Red-tails that had their eyrie on 

 the face of a sheer cliff, three hundred feet high. As well as 1 could see 

 with binoculars, the nest was made entirely of sticks and was built, none 

 too securely, on a small ledge, fifty feet from the top of the cliff. This 

 cliff formed one side of a deep canyon, along the base of a steep, rugged 

 mountain. Both sides of the canyon, below the cliffs, were piled high 

 with slide-rock, the home of hundreds of Pikas (Ocholona). The top of 

 the lowest side of the canyon was fringed with tall Douglas fir and Murray 

 pine. On the other side, back of the three-hundred-foot cliff containing 

 the eyrie, the mountain rose, almost sheer, for another six hundred feet. 



June 8, 1915. On this date, when the eyrie was first discovered, there 

 were two or three young, just emerging from the down — their heads could 

 be seen above the rim of the nest. The female was kept under observation 

 for several hours and did not fly to the nest. The male was heard in the 

 distance but did not come into the canyon. The female was greatly ex- 

 cited, flying in short circles over my head and screaming constantly. She 

 frequently alighted on the top of a dead, stunted fir, in the canyon, below 

 the eyrie. A pair of Western Robins attacked her several times and 

 drove her from the tree. 



May 27, 1916. I was unable to visit the eyrie again until the following 

 year. On May 27, there were two downy young. The old birds were 

 more hostile than in the previous year. When I first entered the canyon, 

 the male was flying about the face of the cliff, screaming fiercely, a long- 

 drawn-out hissing scream, like the escape of exhaust steam from a locomo- 

 tive. As I scrambled over the talus at the foot of the cliff, he swooped at 

 me several times from a great height, slanting down at tremendous speed 



