ing white in color, the corded ice crystals, in structure and proportions, were not unlike 

 columnar basalt turned on edge. Altogether it was an inspiring sight, and one decidedly 

 out of the ordinary. But of bird life at this exalted level there was never a sign. 

 Neither Leucosticte nor Pipit nor any one of half a dozen others which one might have 

 expected on a less isolated mountain mass. It was the official end of the season. 



In presenting, thus, what may seem to some of his readers a sort of hardluck story 

 of operations during 1916, the writer must remind them of several considerations by 

 way of explanation. In the first place, the field work after June 6th was, frankly, a 

 reconnaissance venture, undertaken chiefly in the interests of (and financed by) "The 

 Birds of California" enterprise. We could have collected more eggs by sticking to 

 almost any one given station. Secondly, by pursuing a prescribed course through a 

 new and diversified country, especially in California, one is more likely to miss the 

 season than to hit it in most places. Each locality is a law unto itself, and its peculiar 

 conditions must be known in advance, if one is to expect the maximum of results. In 

 the third place, 1916 was undoubtedly an off-season. Its extravagances and reservations 

 were alike exaggerated. A freak season meteorologically means an off season oologi- 

 cally. 



But after all is said, there is no denying that Mother Nature is chary of her oologi- 

 cal favors in California. We get "big stuff," romantic stuff, now and then; and always 

 we have the thrill of high expectations as well as the reactions of hard work, but the 

 daily returns do not foot up numerically as they do in an average Eastern section. In 

 an unusual degree each species presents its own problems in the West, and the inci- 

 dental returns from just being out-doors are comparatively few and not to be depended 

 on. It is for this reason that exchange values assigned to most Western species are 

 necessarily higher than the values placed on eggs of analogous Eastern species. And it 

 is this that our Eastern friends are slow to understand, because they are working under 

 very different conditions. 



Yet we are not to be understood as either whining or apologizing. Nests and 

 eggs of ninety-three species taken in a season is "no that bad"; while as to the precise 

 number of sets taken, that is a matter which interests only our father confessor, The 

 California State Fish and Game Commission. We are gloriously content. 



A Group of Well-Collected Nests 



Page twenty-five 



