236 Bendire ofi the Habits of the Getius Sphyrapicus. [July 



morning, following close along the banks of Fort Creek, directly 

 east of the post, towards its source, and I had not proceeded more 

 than half a mile from my house when I saw two males chasing 

 each other about a dead pine stump, and uttering at the same 

 time shrill cries ; this is what attracted my attention to them. I 

 tried to get within ordinary shooting distance of them, but they 

 took alarm and flew in opposite directions before I was near 

 enough. Nevertheless I took a snap shot at the one nearest to 

 me, but it continued its flight apparently uninjured, crossing 

 the creek, which was too deep and cold for me to ford, about 

 sixty yards in advance of me, and much to my disgust disappeared 

 in the heavier pine timber on the opposite side, without stopping 

 while it was in sight. As it was useless as well as impracticable 

 to follow this one, I kept on in the direction the other had taken, 

 but failed to see it again. Fully an hour afterwards, on my way 

 returning to the post, and when within a few yards of the place 

 where I first noticed the two birds, tired out and disgusted, I 

 sat down on an old log and was taking a rest, absorbed in reflec- 

 tions on my bad luck, when from quite a distance, I noticed a 

 black-looking bird flying towards me, coming from the opposite 

 side of the creek, and from the same direction the one I shot at 

 had taken earlier in the morning. Its flight was so peculiar and 

 strange, constantly sinking, that I refrained from shooting when 

 it first came within range. No wonder ; it was its last expiring 

 effort, and it actually dropped within a yard of where I was sitting. 

 It was unquestionably the very bird I had shot at more than an 

 hour before ; no one else was out hunting at the time, as no other 

 shots were heard. A single No. 12 pellet had penetrated the 

 lungs, and the bird in its dying struggle had evidently tried to 

 reach the same stump again on which I noticed it at first. 



My earliest record for 18S3, on which I obtained a specimen, 

 a male, was March 20. It seems to me to be a more solitary 

 bird than 6". ruber. I never saw more than two together or in 

 close proximity of each other. It is also more shy, and does not 

 allow itself to be approached so readily as either of the preceding 

 species. Its breeding range extends, near Fort Klamath, from 

 an altitude of about 5000 feet to the higher peaks of the Cascade 

 Range, which attain in that vicinity a height of about 9000 feet. 

 On the mountain slopes about Crater Lake, it seems to be most 

 abundant, but not as much so as S. ruber is in the lower valley, 



