4 Gbe TOarWer 



as "tse-e-e-e " ; or " te-e-e- " ; or, sometimes, simply as " e-e-e-". The "at- 

 tack" is variant. Some individuals preface the terminal with a trilling " di- 

 di-di-di-", five or six times repeated in monotone. A variant of this preface 

 is given in my note-book as " te." A more deliberate form is " dis," — (it- 

 erated slowly and but three our four times.) A common song, altogether, is 

 "Dis-dis-dis tze-e-e-e". A variant of this is "tser-tser-tser-te-e-e-". But the 

 oddest vocable of all, — as well as one of the commonest, — rings rapturously 

 out as: "Cutt-sie-cut-sie-jee": (U as in Full). All these with a number of vari- 

 ant forms ring out along the canyons, from steep-side to bottom most of the 

 summer long. The Arctic Towhee is usually paired, in Wyoming, about the 

 middle of May. By the first of June layings are well-nigh complete; and 

 from that date onward big grey-haired boys may enjoy the excitement of 

 flushing the sitting Towhees from their nests. 



As a boy, in Minnesota, I used to consider it quite a feat to find the nest 

 of a Towhee. One is inclined to consider it so, still. Our Minnesota nests 

 are oftener in the openings where a sitting bird is not so readily flushed; <>r 

 else in undergrowth so dense that she flushes without being seen. But the 

 Arctic Towhee does not love the dense bush growths. It does, indeed, fre- 

 quent the isolated patches of burr-oak along the sandy sides of the broader 

 canyons. But marked preference appears to be shown for weedy or shrubby 

 areas where the growth is not more than two or three feet high, at the high- 

 est. Amid such locations 'one. who wijl brave the morning dew or face the 

 evening gnats may enjoy rare sport. A choke-cherry "wand" is cut, as 

 long as may be switched about without fatigue, and the bark removed. With 

 this the one who learns the not-easy knack of flicking the masses of rose or 

 of buck-brush just far enough ahead of him may put himself in the way of 

 a fairly exhaustive study of the nidology and the oology of the Arctic Tow- 

 hee. With one exception all nests observed by me have been on the ground. 

 They are usually very much coarser and more bulky than the nests of 

 Towhee the Common. As for the eggs: they seem curiously to blend the ex- 

 tremes in marking of both Far Eastern and Far Western birds. We find 

 not a few sets that are pale-ly striped as are eggs of the ordinary pale east- 

 ern type. But the bulk of eggs are more closely allied, in markings, to those 

 of megalonyx. A very few, (apparently), are more heavily marked than 

 either; resembling certain rarely-beautiful types of the eggs of the Solitaire. 

 (The markings, however, are denser than those of any solitaire eggs I have 

 ever seen.) 



Unfortunately my nesting records for 1905 are not available. And one 

 dare not trust memory, in the matter of egg-numbers. I am, however, quite 

 certain that sets are prevailingly of Four, while I know that complete 

 sets of three are quite rare. ("Three-fifths of observed sets — Five": MS., 

 "Nesting Ways"). The Arctic Towhee is a most assiduous parent. He is, 



