grees Fahrenheit, and rarely above 95, although 115 is a usual summer tempera- 

 ture, and 125 no rare exception. 



We woke on the morning of May 18th to a temperature of 50 degrees, in a 

 canyon whose fluted and tinted sides later pulsated in the first decade of the sec- 

 ond hundred, and which becomes on occasion a perfect inferno. We should have 

 passed on, but William had had the good fortune to trace, before breakfast, 

 several White-throated Swifts {Aeronautes melanoleucus) to their nests in the 

 sculptured recesses in one of the most picturesque of the containing walls. The 

 lowest stratum of this embattled cliff is of indurated earth; and while the face of 

 it is perfectly perpendicular, being protected by a sandstone capping, the rare 

 storms of winter have left it seamed and scaled. The first location was only six 

 feet down beneath the capping, but even this necessitated the use of rope and 

 much vigorous picking and prying with a steel-shod pike. The eggs were placed 

 on a flimsy platform of agglutinated feathers resting on the floor of a crevice well 

 back and guarded by a tortuous approach. After drilling for an hour, William 

 appealed to the longer "reach" of his dad; and in the effort to make good, fishing 

 the eggs out one by one on an aluminum spoon, I stretched my left arm, perma- 

 nently, for at least an inch and a half — there or thereabouts. Five elongated 

 ovals as white as snow and as fresh as paint rewarded our efforts, and were held 

 to be worth all our osteekteinic contortions. 



Owens Valley proper is poor collecting country. We had been lured to 

 this section by extravagant accounts of extensive swamps where ducks bred by 

 thousands; but what we found, instead, was a few decadents sloughs, which were 

 being sucked dry by the feeders of the great Los Angeles aqueduct. If we were 

 disappointed in one way, we were more than compensated by the glories of the 

 Sierras. Not elsewhere in America may one see a mountain chain rising sheer 

 ten thousand feet above the "culture level/' or not at least within so short a space, 

 measured horizontally. Here one steals up to the very feet of majesty and catches 

 it unawares. The course for the last hundred miles is an ecstasy of privilege, 

 even though some of the country roads are of the vilest. 



Still intent upon the undiscarded, although badly damaged, theory of a 

 duck paradise, we made camp on the 22nd of May near Laws, some six miles 

 northeast of Bishop, which is the principal market town of this interior section. 

 We found here a group of depauperate swamps maintained by the overflow of 

 irrigation ditches and much overstocked by both cattle and horses. Although 

 the number of marsh-haunting birds was disappointing, the variety was reassuring 

 and seemed at least reminiscent of a former glory. Ducks were scarce, but a 

 pair of Blue-winged Teals (Querquedula dlscors), accounted rare anywhere in the 

 Pacific Coast States, were undoubtedly breeding. Wilson Snipes (Galllnago 

 deticata) filled the air with their amiable hootings; but the cattle pressed too 

 closelv upon their cover, and we found only a single nest of four, fresh.' Wilson 

 Phalarope (Steganopus tricolor) were also common, and we secured four sets, 

 not without a very considerable expenditure of time. A mild zest was added 

 to our adventures by the presence of three "Nevadan" forms described by Grin- 

 nell, viz., the Nevada Redwing {Agelalus p hoe ulceus nevadensls) , the Nevada 

 Cowbnd\jlolothrus ater artemlslae), and the Nevada Savannah Sparrow {Passer- 

 culus sandwlchensls nevadensls). The last named, especially, was common — 

 much commoner than any other member of the sandwlchensls group at any point 

 within my knowledge. 



Our stay of eight days in these dubious swamps was aggravated by foul- 

 smelling mud, diligent mosquitoes, and fiendish horse-flies; but it was alleviated 

 bv a double panorama of distant mountains, the most solacing in our experience. 

 The glories of the Sierras, which crowd the western sky in bewildering array, 

 are supported upon the east by a desert range whose very name. White Mountains, 

 is scarcely known beyond the limits of a county, yet whose major peaks, well to 

 northward, surpass the 14,000 foot level, and so rank among the highest in the 

 United States. 



50 



