WILD LIFE IN CALIFORNIA 



53 



rial, picking and pulling everything that 

 might yield a thread. In the course of its 

 search it came within two feet of my position, 

 showing no fear in it sanxiety to find just 

 what was wanted or needed in the construc- 

 tion of its nest. The next day it made a visit 

 in as familiar manner to the kitchen part of 

 our premises, where it was more successful 

 in its search for strings. Its squeaky, little 

 chirps in keeping with its diminutive size 

 seemed like notes of joy and contentment. 



Two pair of wrens were nesting nearby. One 

 pair occupied a hole in an oak tree that shaded 

 the house. The location of the other pair I 

 was not able to discover. One of these couple 

 had selected the fire-box of our cooking stove 

 before our arrival and had a nest well along 

 in its construction when our necessities com- 

 pelled them to seek another location. The 

 stove's place is on the back porch and the 

 little birds found entrance by the hole made 

 for the pipe of the "waterback," removed 

 when the stove left civilization. This species 

 of wren is known in ornithology as the "Vigor 

 wren, Thryomanes bewicki spilurus. They are 

 restless little creatures, and can be seen and 

 heard singing about the house at any hour of 

 the day. 



For several days a black-throated gray 

 • warbler (Dendroica nigrescence), a bird some- 

 what smaller than the wren, with not quite 

 so long a foreign name, was a common vis- 

 itor to our front yard, where it gathered mate- 

 rial for its nest. After securing the particular 

 thing it wanted it would fly to a scrub oak 

 about ten yards away. Consequently I con- 

 cluded there was where I would find the nest 

 if I wished to inspect it later on. But subse- 

 quently I discovered that the flight to the oak 

 was deceptive; that the bird went out on the 

 opposite side and then flew to a thick man- 

 zanita bush where it had built its nest. This 

 bush was so located on one side that a direct 

 flight to it from our front yard was but a 

 few feet more distant than the flight to the 

 oak. I leave it to the reader to determine 

 whether or not the warbler in taking the 

 course it did was not trying to conceal the 

 location of its nest-building operations. 



While the linnets, or redheads, were among 

 our most numerous visitors, I noticed only 

 one nest and that was in the attic of our 

 house. The nest was built in one of the rooms 

 where a corner of heavy wall paper was torn 

 away from the wall, making a projection and 

 support. As this part of the dwelling was not 

 used or occupied by our family we did not 

 dispute the bird's preemption of the premises 

 but left it to rear its family in peace and 

 the security from natural enemies the spot 

 afforded. How did the bird enter this part of 

 the house? Ths was the first thing that came 

 into my mind when I discovered the nest. 

 Upon looking around I saw a pane of glass 

 missing in one of the windows. Subsequently 

 I saw the linnet make use of the opening. 



At no other place in the state did I ever 

 see so many grosbeaks as were to be seen at 

 this time in and about our amphitheater. As 

 mentioned elsewhere their melodious warb- 



lings, trillings and whistlings were to be heard 

 from morning until night and were so musical 

 and sweet that it never became tiresome. 

 There was one singer that spent the greater 

 part of the day on the topmost branches of a 

 large madrone tree not more than sixty yards 

 from the house, that seemed to be a superior 

 songster. He possessed a greater range of 

 changes in his song and his execution of trill- 

 ing and soft whistling notes, in which he in- 

 dulged more at evening time, was not equaled 

 by any of the other singers occupying other 

 tree tops thereabouts. This fine singer was one 

 of a pair building a nest in a young oak 

 tree near the house. However, it was the lady 

 of the household, as in some families of 

 the highest order of life, who was doing all the 

 work of constructing the nest. If the male 

 member had contributed a straw, twig, string 

 or anything for the cradle the mother re- 

 quired for her babies, the act was not wit- 

 nessed. If he had done so perhaps we should 

 have been denied the pleasure of much of his 

 song. In his own defense he would have prob- 

 ably declared he could not render classical 

 music and work at the same time. 



A valley quail selected a place within 60 

 feet of our back gate for her nest. Under a 

 bunch of dry grass, that would not ordinarily 

 attract attention, she had shaped a place to 

 hold her brood of eggs. When we first dis- 

 covered the nest by nearly stepping on the 

 bird only one egg was in it. But nearly every 

 day the mother bird returned to the nest and 

 deposited an egg and on the day of our de- 

 parture for home there were six eggs in it. 

 The call the mountain quail makes in the 

 mating season was frequently heard by us from 

 the adjacent woods surrounding our place, 

 but the birds are so shy that we have seen but 

 one pair, though from the noise they made 

 one would think the "woods were full of 

 them." 



Enumeration of the species of birds to be 

 found here will vary but little from the cen- 

 sus of bird life of other wooded parts of 

 Central California. I misse'd here the presence 

 of the mocking bird that I have seen on the 

 Pleasanton ridge, Alameda county; on Mt. 

 Diablo, and in northern Mendocino; also some 

 of the warblers and sparrows common to the 

 first two districts mentioned. But what we 

 lacked in variety was made up by quantity. 



Of the four-footed forms of animal life 

 common to this section deer were formerly 

 most prominent. Up to three or four years 

 ago one could not go more than a few hun- 

 dred yards in any direction from our place 

 without expecting to come across one or more 

 of these beautiful animals. But now the auto- 

 mobiles having made all distant hunting 

 grounds more accessible and with the greater 

 number of hunters by reason of the rapid in- 

 crease of the population of the state, the 

 number of deer has been greatly reduced, also 

 the possibility of seeing one in our rambles. 

 Though one day on this trip while out whip- 

 ping the Rancheria for a mess of trout a doe 

 and yearling came down into the bed of the 

 stream and stood for some little time on a 



