74 



THE OOLOGIST 



California Condor. 



Friday, February 14, 1913, while my 

 wife and I were strolling across a field 

 in the valley of Eagle Rock, California, 

 some seven or eight miles northeast of 

 Los Angeles, I casually glanced sky- 

 vrard and the next instant nearly frigh- 

 tened my wife to death with a startled 

 cry of "Condor! Condor!" It was a 

 few moments before she caught the 

 drift of my cry, but when she did there 

 were two of us standing in that field 

 with some queer emotions in our 

 breasts. 



The great bird was directly over- 

 head, at the time, and very low down, 

 about two hundred feet, as near as I 

 could judge; and flying very slowly, 

 so it seemed at first, but nevertheless 

 traveling out of sight in a surprisingly 

 short time. Its method of flight was 

 seven or eight wing beats and then a 

 prolonged soaring, and the light color- 

 ed areas under the wings were very 

 plain, as was its entirely naked neck. 

 Its general color seemed to be a rusty 

 black; but could not tell this positive- 

 ly. It was flying north, and when it 

 came to the foothills of the Sierra 

 Madre Range, which at this point are 

 about 600 to 1000 feet, it barely cleared 

 the top of the hills. 



There can be no question of the iden- 

 tity of this bird, as its great size would 

 distinguish it from all other birds at 

 once, without the distinguishing whit- 

 ish patches under the wings. As near 

 as I could estimate in flight, its breadth 

 should be about ten or eleven fept. 



This will always be a red letter day 

 for me, for at this day and date, the 

 California Condor seems to be a rarae 

 avis indeed. In over eight years of 

 steady tramping through the Southern 

 Sierras, only once before have I seen 

 or thought 1 saw one of these giant 

 vultures. But it was so late in the 

 evening and at such a distance that I 

 have never been absolutely sure. And 



now to have had the pleasure of such 

 a near view of one in my own home is 

 luck indeed. 



While never hoping, I have cherish- 

 ed a much hidden dream that some 

 day in some lonely canon I may stum- 

 ble across the nest of this species; but 

 it's only a dream; yet a pleasant one, 

 whether it ever comes true or not. 

 And many a lonely campfire has been 

 made brighter by just such dreams as 

 these. H. Arden Edwards. 



Lcs Angeles, Cal. 



Nesting of the Whip Poor Will. 



(Antrostomus vociferus) 

 Early one still, beautiful evening, 

 during the first part of May of the year 

 1908, while I was slowly walking upon 

 a read which wound along the top of a 

 high irregular ridge of hill, the lonely 

 cries of a Whip-poor-will came to me. 

 It seemed that the bird was calling 

 from a small quadrilateral wood that 

 stood on a miniature plateau on the 

 very top of a high ridge of hill, a half 

 mile to the west of me. I settled my- 

 self to listen to the cries of this love- 

 ly bird, and time after time I heard 

 its weird whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, 

 whip-poor-will. 



As the nesting time for the Whip- 

 poor-will approached, I decided to in- 

 vestigate the wood from which the 

 bird had sent its peculiar notes. This 

 small tract of timber consisted prin- 

 cipally of oak trees of medium size — 

 both the white and the red varieties. 

 On May 20, I went to the wood and 

 quietly entered the southern border. 

 Walking slowly along I searched care- 

 fully over the forest floor of fallen 

 leaves. I crept about clumps of under- 

 brush; scrambled over fallen tree 

 trunks; and finally reached the north- 

 ern border of the timber, without the 

 slightest sign of a Whip-poor-will. 

 Spying a rather open space of ground, 

 close to a pile of decaying logs, I quiet- 



