140 
THE NIDOLOGIST 
Nest and Eggs of the Calaveras Warbler. 
(Helminthophila ruficapilla guttural.) 
URING the months of June and July 
D of the past summer I made the ac- 
quaintance of this little bird while on 
a trip through the Sierras. It was first met 
at about 3,500 feet elevation on the road 
from Placerville to Lake Tahoe. At 3,700 
feet we camped for several days, and there 
found it more common, and thence on over 
the summit and down tothe lake, we heard 
its cheerful notes nearly every day. As I 
have had very poor success in describing 
bird notes I will not attempt this, but will 
only say that its bright, sprightly song did 
much to enliven our trip through the moun- 
tains. At 5,000 feet we found them most 
common, and from 7,000 to 9,000, feet they 
gradually disappeared, apparently going as 
high up as the black oak, in which trees 
they were generally seen, skipping about 
in search of insects. From Lake Tahoe we 
returned to Placerville, and from there went 
south to Yosemite, crossing the ridges of 
the lower Sierras, and cutting directly 
through the counties of El Dorado, Amador, 
Calaveras and Tuolumne. All the way 
where we were at 3,000 feet or more eleva- 
tion we caught occasional glimpses of the 
Calaveras Warbler and heard its song from 
the tops of the oaks. At Big Trees, Cala- 
veras county, it wasseen frequently, and in 
Yosemite Valley was quite common even 
around about the tents of the many campers 
there, 
Near Fyffe post-office—elevation 3,700 
feet—I found my first nest, on June 5. I 
had watched several pairs of the birds at 
different times with little success, and, as I 
was almost certain that the nest would be 
on the ground and well hidden, I had small 
hopes of finding it. One day, as I was re- 
turning from a morning’s shooting, walk- 
ing along the side of a hill, and scanning 
the lower limbs ofthe black oaks for nests 
of Cassin’s Vireo, a Warbler fluttered outa 
few yards in front of me and then scuttled 
away over the leaves, feigning a broken 
wing for a short distance, and then flying 
away. I stopped in my tracks and looked, 
and looked again, but I saw nothing but 
dead leaves and refuse covering the ground. 
I stood there for nearly five minutes, mean- 
while inwardly resolving to find that bird’s 
nest if I had to turn over every leaf within 
fifty yards. I knelt down and immediately 
found myself looking into a nest of five 
handsome fresh eggs. I turned round, and 
now saw the parent hopping about above 
me in an excited manner in the top of an 
oak. In another moment I had picked up 
my gun and shot, and a female Calaveras 
Warbler fell almost into the nest. The nest 
was situated among the dead leaves near the 
foot ofa cedar stump, on the side of the hill 
facing the east. A littlesprig of cedar grew 
from the upper side of the nest, but save this 
it was surrounded by nothing but dead 
leaves which covered asmall open space on 
the side of the hill, elsewhere thickly car- 
peted with the so-called ‘‘ mountain 
misery.”’ 
The front and outer edges of the nest are 
composed of dead leaves and leaf stems. 
Save one or two bits of dead grass, the rest 
of the nest is of a peculiar brown fibre 
resembling horsehair. Its outside and in- 
side diameters are respectively 314 and 214% 
inches. ‘The eggs are creamy-white, spot- 
ted with cinnamon-rufous, somewhat 
wreathed and blotched on the larger ends, 
where they are mixed with pale lavender. 
They measure as follows: .58x .47, .59 x 
.48, .56 X .47, .59 X .50 and .59 x .47. 
About ten miles from this place I founda 
second nest near the American River on 
June 10. I was walking up a hill about 
200 yards from the river when I noticed a 
pair of Warblers in the top ofan oak. It 
is often very disappointing to watch a bird 
for a long time and then find it tobea male. 
This time, however, I had a sure thing, for 
both birds were in easy view, hopping 
about catching insects, occasionally stop- 
ping to burst into song and at short inter- 
vals indulging in little amorous frolics with 
each other. For some time I watched them 
thus, often with some difficulty as they 
passed rapidly from tree to tree, whem all at 
once, as if suddenly remembering a for-. 
gotten duty, both birds quickly flew across 
a little gulch and lit on the ground among 
the dead leaves. HereI presume the female 
gave her mate to understand that his ser- 
vices were no longer desired, as he immed- 
iately left. Keeping my eyes fixed on the 
spot, I hurried across the gulch and soon 
flushed the bird from the nest, which, like 
the first, contained five fresh eggs. The 
nest was situated much like the first, in a 
thick bank of dead leaves on the southern 
side of a hill, almost bare of trees. The 
leaves formed.a canopy overhanging one 
side of the nest, and from one corner grewa 
little tuft of ‘‘mountain misery,’’ and as the 
