48 THE CONDOR Vol. IX 



Nearly every picture that I took of the young specimen shows her in the act 

 of hissing. The sound was made well back in the throat, like the passage of air 

 thro a moderately large opening, a rather subdued sound, not unlike the sharp hiss 

 made by the human tongue and teeth. The note of the old birds was merely a 

 single menacing cry, perhaps most truly characterized as a scream, uttered as they 

 darted toward us when we approached their nesting place. This cry might be 

 compared to that of the red-tailed hawk so commonly heard in the big timber of the 

 bottom lands of Kansas. 



Unfortunately the skin of the male bird spoiled in transit but I still have the 

 skull and wings. The female skin Martin sold to an eastern museum, I under- 

 stand, while the skin of the youngster is mounted in the museum of the State 

 Normal School at Greely, Colorado. 



Topeka, Kansas^. 



NESTING WAYS OF THE WESTERN GNATCATCHER 



BY HARRIET WILLIAMvS MYERS 



I HAD always admired him — this dainty little blue-drab bird with his white breast, 

 long black tail with conspicuous white outer shafts, and blue-drab mantle, so, 

 when on the morning of July 9, I came upon him and his mate engaged in 

 household duties, my delight was boundless. We had come up from L,os Angeles, 

 my companion and I, for a week's stay in the Eittle Santa Anita Canyon situated in 

 the Sierra Madre Mountain range. 



The first nest of the gnatcatcher iPoIioptila cceniica ohsciira) that w^e found 

 was near the top of a holly bush that had grown so tall that it was more like a tree 

 than a shrub. The nest was in an exposed, upright crotch, and tho overhanging 

 branches sheltered it from the sun the most of the day, not a twig or a leaf obstructed 

 our view of it. It was cup-shaped, being much deeper than broad, and was made 

 of fine gray material that just matched the tree trunk. There were three birds in 

 the nest and we judged them to be somewhat less than a week old. 



We stationed ourselves among the tall weeds in a shady spot and the birds, 

 paying not the least attention to us, went on with their feeding, thus enabling us to 

 observe them under natural conditions. Another holly bush grew close b}^ the nest 

 tree, and when we first found the nest and saw that each bird came into this neigh- 

 boring holly before feeding, we thought it was fear of us on their part that made 

 them do it; but we soon found that this was a regular habit of theirs. In all the 

 hours that I watched at the nest, I never saw them go directly to the young. Even 

 when they came from the nest side they flew past and into this one tree, where they 

 hopped about in it as if in search of food, then usually down onto a bare twig, and 

 from there straight across the several feet of clearing to the nest. It seemed like 

 such a waste of time, but it was their way. 



These western gnatcatchers were so much alike that our first thought was 

 whether we would be able to tell the male and female apart. The\^ looked exactly 

 alike except that one bird seemed in better plumage, looking slicker and smoother 

 than the other. However, we had not watched long before we discovered that one 

 of the white tail-feathers of one bird was shorter than the other. It looked as if a 

 new white feather was just coming in, which proved to be the case. It was on the 



