ao <% 3§arbh»r 



Passing by the several problems of distributional interest, in connection 

 with the Brewer Blackbird, I wish to close this paper with a suggestion : 

 based upon that well-known logical fallacy, — " induction by simple enumer- 

 ation": The twelfth of July, one summer, I found a well-wrought nest 

 of the Brewer Blackbird in a lone burr-oak bush beside a pond, near St. 

 Vincent, Minnesota. All contingent conditions were so in harmony with the 

 well-established facts concerned with the second-nestings of the Clay-colored 

 Sparrovv which I was at the time studying that I straightway fell to wonder- 

 ing whether or no the Brewer Blackbird may not, regularly or semi-regu- 

 larly, lay a second time, normally, each Summer ; varying its choice of a 

 site exactly as does the Clay-colored Sparrow by choosing, not a low-lying 

 spot, amid the past season's growths, upon the ground ; but amid the now 

 leafy mazes of some bush. Thence, onward, I sought corroboration ; but 

 it never came. 



Bashfully, then, I am left hapless in the face of an unsolved mystery, as 

 to the Brewer Blackbird. But a second, equally tantalizing, mystery speed- 

 ily came to light: (for is not research the step-mother of mystery? 



One may readily infer, from the brief sketches just given ; that the 

 Brewer Blackbird is greatly local in its habitances during the breeding 

 time. One finds a colony of these birds ; (and these colonies will average 

 only about eight or ten pairs); while successive passings-by, of the locality 

 covered, will reveal that same bevy of anxious, attendant biids. Well, then: 

 such bevies I have several times found habitant about rocky, sage-covered 

 hillsides in the Wyoming desert country ; the habitance being literally well- 

 marked by abundant presence of excrement upon the rocks. To some ex- 

 tent the nests of these birds may have been hidden in the rather-luxuriant 

 growths of white sage; which, true to its habit, is normally found only along 

 the water-courses. This fringe of white sage extends everywhere along the 

 narrow gulches that are furrowed deep among the desert hills. But even 

 the presence of these will but partially explain the presence of Blackbirds, 

 in fair numbers, along areas where no provenly-fitting nest-places were to 

 be found. Positively, the nests of the Brewer Blackbird, in such areas, 

 must be placed on the ground, among the gnarled stems of the black sage. 

 Theoretically, that is 'easy": in point of fact the condition remained for me, 

 two seasons long, a steady, invariable bafflement. A good thing, this, for the 

 character of the Man : but a sore thing, indeed, for the heart of the Boy, 



(Foot Note): Readers of The Condor will have noted, ere this, the discovery by J. G. Tyler 

 of a new tvpe of nesting for the Brewer Blackbird: behind strips of bark or in deserted flicker-holes of 

 dead pines standing in the water. This, in the Sierras, at 5.000 feet. (See The Condor, May. 1909: 

 See also, The Condor, Barlow, Jan., 1900 ; and Bowles. Birds of Washington. 47). 



EDITORIAL Note — Photographs III and IV, referred to by the author on page iS, proved to be 

 too indistinct for successful reproduction. 



