The Nesting of Hepburn’s Rosy Finch 
By CHARLES STUART MOODY, M. D. 
With a photograph by the author 
WAS not aware until quite recently that the nesting habits of Hepburn’s 
Rosy Finch (Leucosticte tephrocotis littoralis) were but little known. The bird 
is so common among the higher sierras of the Northwest that I supposed 
all the ornithologists were familiar with it and its home-life. Prof. W. L. Dawson, 
in his most excellent work on the birds of Washington, however, mentions the 
fact that the eggs have not, to his knowledge, been taken. That being the case, 
I will endeavor to state some few things about the bird and its nest; it having — 
been my good fortune to locate at least three nests of this Rosy Finch, one of 
which I succeeded in photographing 7m satu. 
Hepburn’s Leucosticte is an almost constant resident in north Idaho, especi- 
ally in the higher slopes of the Bitter Root, Coeur d’Alene, and Cabinet mountains 
It does not seem to be deterred by the deep snows, and many times I have seen 
flocks of them feeding with Crossbills about the door-yards of miners’ cabins 
when the snow was many feet deep. Like Crossbills, they are very fond of salt, 
and will greedily eat anything of a saline character. There is also a small black 
midge, or gnat, that covers the snow on certain warm days, and these the birds 
devour. I have also seen them industriously picking about the tops of fir trees 
and on the branches of white cedars. 
I can not better describe their nesting than by giving the incidents relating to 
the photograph which accompanies this article. We were fishing one of the swift 
mountain streams that flow into Lake Pend Oreille in north Idaho, last summer. 
It is a very rough country through which the stream runs. Immense bluffs of 
black basalt and granite tower hundreds of feet sheer from the bed of the stream. 
In the niches grow stunted evergreens and a few deciduous bushes. Several 
miles from where the stream flows into the lake a mining flume begins. It is 
cut a part of the way out of the solid rock and winds sinuously along the mountain 
side. My son and I were picking our way along this flume one day, that being the 
most direct way back to camp, when we noticed a nest high on a shelf of rock 
above our heads. It was late (July 5), and I did not think it to be occupied. 
To make sure, I tossed a small stone up and started a Rosy Finch from her nest. 
I did not attach much importance to the discovery, but the lad insisted upon 
scrambling up to investigate. When he informed me, clinging to the side of the 
cliff, that there were eggs in the nest, I resolved to make a picture of it, more from 
the fact that it was so late in the season than with any idea of perpetuating a rare 
nest. During this time the bird sat upon the top of a small fir that grew near the 
flume, and scolded with an angry chuck, which, as Mr. Dawson has well described 
it, sounds like the slap of the ratlines on a flag-pole in a high wind. 
The next day I returned with my camera and, after a deal of trouble, suc- 
ceeded in getting sufficiently near to the nest to make an exposure. This was 
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