Vol. X.] MAILUARD— BIRDS, MAMMALS OF SISKIYOU COUNTY 81 



we motored slowly along, especial watch was kept for any birds 

 that might possibly be peculiar to such an association, but the 

 few species we noted were the same as those in the adjacent 

 pine regions. 



The season was an intensely dry one and the prospects poor. 

 As we traveled through the very open country, mostly pasture 

 lands, stony surfaced hillsides, or alkali bottoms, we were sur- 

 prised at the total absence of such birds as one would expect to 

 find in such situations. Although we passed through appar- 

 ently ideal places for horned larks (Otocoris), none was seen. 

 An occasional Arkansas Kingbird and a Western Meadowlark 

 were practically all the birds we saw. 



In our circuit around this part of Shasta Valley, we failed to 

 find any place that looked promising and we finally went to the 

 small town of Gazelle where several field parties have done 

 some collecting, but it looked too uninviting in such a dry sea- 

 son to be worth trying, there being little except open and more 

 or less alkali land in its immediate vicinity. We finally went 

 to Edgewood, a small town five miles northwest of Weed, at an 

 altitude of 2900 feet. This place is on the edge of Upper 

 Sonoran, changing quickly into Transition toward the south- 

 east as the country rapidly rises. 



Edgewood is surrounded by meadows irrigated from the 

 snow-fed streams of Shasta, and here, as in the meadows about 

 Weed, the Nevada Red-wing was just preparing to nest, several 

 females being noticed carrying nesting material, while Wilson's 

 Snipe was also taking advantage of such a favorable spot. 



The birds about Edgewood were mostly the ordinary species 

 found in Transition in this part of California, but it was here 

 that we came across the only specimen that we noted of the 

 California Cuckoo, which all three of us saw one evening fly 

 across the railroad track in the town, of the Northern Brown 

 Towhee, which I saw near the village one evening but did not 

 secure, and of the San Joaquin Wren, which Gilchrist found 

 nesting in a small, dead stump not far from the railroad track, 

 and which, like many of the birds found near the railroad here 

 and at Weed, was woefully smudged with oil soot. Shasta 

 River runs through the valley just below Edgewood and in the 

 willows on its banks we found Traill's Flycatcher. A Western 



