224 The Wilson Bulletin — No. 90 . -^ 



over a prairiedog", who slunk barking- angrily away into his 

 hole. The cloud swooped to my head and with perfect ease 

 I could make out that it was Violet-green Swallows. New 

 species on every side and I was hardly through making a 

 good study of one, then another one would loom up and 

 seemed to make the request to be studied and identified. At 

 last I spied some old acquaintances : several Killdeer, one 

 Greater Yellow-legs standing on guard like a German sen- 

 tinel and another enormous flock of swallows alighting to 

 gather up mud — Eave Swallows. Altogether I never did see 

 as many swallows in all my life as I saw here in Laramie in 

 four weeks. Finally I strolled towards my headquarters and 

 there on a telephone post, warbling sweetly, though not very 

 loudly, sat a Mountain Bluebird. I stood in perfect amaze- 

 ment. I looked again but across the street sat two more and 

 farther on was another one warbling, and then I wondered 

 what had induced my dear old friend Dawson to write in his 

 " Birds of Washington " the entire song tradition of the 

 Mountain Bluebi-rd, including the " delightful warble "' of 

 Towns'cnd appears to be quite without foundation etc." I 

 sat down on a somewhat dilapidated lumber pile. I was go- 

 ing to watch those Bluebirds very closely. Altogether I 

 watched three pairs of them and there was certainly a sweet 

 delightful warble coming from those throats. So after all 

 Townsend was right and Dawson is wrong. And I may 

 add that I watched Bluebirds in Laramie every day during 

 my stay and in Rev. W^ichmann'.s yard where they built their 

 nest the male would sing on top of the nesting box and warble 

 often for 15 minutes at a time. Yes indeed the Mountain 

 Bluebird has a delightful zvarhle-, although it does not quite 

 come up to that of our eastern Bluebird in power and sweet- 

 ness. At last I got back to the house and here in the yard 

 was a White-throated and two White-crowned Sparrows but 

 of course I could not make out whether it was leucophrys 

 proper or the subspecies. Another short stroll added the 

 Western Chipi)ing and the Clay-colored Sparrows to my list 

 of birds observed. 



