AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. n 



They lay from three to five blue green eggs which are specked with 



brown. 



HABITS. 



The shores of Lake Tahoe, wherever the destructive timber cutters 

 have not penetrated, are covered with a magnificent growth of pine, 

 cedar, tamarack, and two species of "silver fir." These latter, often 

 reaching a height of two hundred feet, straight as a spire, the trunk 

 surrounded with level whorls of dense branches, are favorite nesting 

 places for several species of birds, the Purple Finch, Olive-sided Fly- 

 catcher, Blue-fronted Jay, and on the lower half dead branches, the 

 Western Robin. In one such tree I found three nests. The layers of 

 branches, so dense that one can not see through them, seem to divide 

 the tree into quite separate compartments,, and a fledgling would be in 

 no danger of falling from one floor to the other. There these three 

 families were established as in the flats of a New York skyscraper; 

 near the summit, at least one hundred and fifty feet from the ground, 

 the Flycatcher; not far below, a family of Finches, and near the source 

 of supplies on the ground, a Robin. 



Only the Jay climbs to his house, mounting as it were by a spiral 

 staircase close to the trunk; the others fly in at the windows. 



One day I was engaged in watching these three families, when I saw 

 a flash of scarlet and gold, and heard a sweet sonc:, of five distinct 

 phrases, slightly hurried towards the end, but otherwise closely re- 

 sembling that of the Black-headed Grosbeak, out of the "Dusky hol- 

 lows of the tree, veiled by their sunlit 'broideries," a scarlet head was 

 peering at me, or so I thought. Soon I saw a flash of wings barred 

 with yellow and white, in sharp contrast to the black of the back, and a 

 brilliantly colored male Crimson-headed Tanager, in full nuptial plu- 

 mage, flew to another tree, where he again poured out his song. 



This movement was repeated and I found that he was circling about 

 me, always looking in one direction. Before long I found that I was 

 not the center of attraction, for he flew to a small pine tree behind me, 

 alighted on a slightly pendant limb about twenty feet from the ground 

 and stooping over, seemed to be feeding young. There I found the 

 nest, the center of his thoughts, towards which his song was directed 

 from morning till night, for he never seemed to go out of sight or hear- 

 ing of it. The nest was a very frail structure of yellowish root-fibres 

 and twigs, quite inconspicuous from its position in a tuft of pine 

 needles. 



The position at the end of a slender bough, was well chosen as a pro- 

 tection against the chipmunk, one of the two most dreaded enemies of 

 nesting birds in the Sierras. I had seen a more accessable nest robbed 



