6o 



- The average measurements of the eleven eggs is .61 inches 

 by .47 with extremes of .64 by .51 and .57 by 48. 



Hylocichla ustulata almae. Alma's Thrush. 



Although a common summer resident of the Upper Yukon, 

 I failed in 1899 to find there a nest of Alma's Thrush with 

 eggs. A nest with four just-hatched young which I found at 

 Caribou Crossing on June 25, resembled that of H. ii. swain- 

 sonii, and was situated eight feet from the ground in a 

 thicket of young spruces. Many empty nests were noticed 

 in similar situations at from six to ten feet from the ground. 



The song of Alma's Thrush is to my ear vastly superior to 

 that of the vaunted Hermit Thrush and closely resembles 

 that of the Russet-backed and Olive-backed Thrushes. 

 Like most of its family it is shy and retiring in its 

 habits, frequenting tangled thickets and damp woodland 

 from the mountains of southern British Columbia to the 

 Arctic Circle. It is quiet during most of the day but its 

 sweet song can be heard at all hours of the short, summer 

 nights. 



At Sicamous in the Cascade Mountains of British Colum- 

 bia Dr. Jonathan Dwight, Jr., and I found this bird tolerably 

 common in early July, 1903. A nest which it was my good 

 fortune to find on July 3, securing both parents, was six feet 

 from the ground in the central fork of a deciduous sapling in 

 a thicket at the side of an overgrown cart-path on a wooded 

 hillside. It contained four eggs advanced in incubation one 

 of which was unfortunately broken. A nest on which the 

 bird was sitting, found by Dr. Dwight on the following day, 

 was about twenty feet up in the horizontal limb of a slender 

 spruce growing not far from a path in a thick wood. We 

 did not investigate the contents of this nest, mosquitoes 

 making existence in its vicinity unendurable. 



The nest taken is composed chiefly of fine moss mixed with 

 a few dry leaves and grasses, and covered externally with 



