456 LAND BIRDS 



of California, where he will spend the summer ; and as , 

 he loiters along the way hunting for insects among the 

 golden tassels of the oaks, we are charmed with his 

 dainty grace and soft sweet twitter. 



All day long he flits about through the oak trees, lean- 

 ing away over the tips of the boughs to investigate a 

 spray of leaves, or stretching up his pretty head to reach 

 a blossom just above him ; now clinging head downward 

 underneath a spray, or hovering under the yellow tassels 

 as a bee hovers beneath a flower. But the everlast- 

 ing hills are calling him, and day by day he goes nearer 

 to them, higher and higher up the range until his own 

 particular thicket is reached, where he can hide his pretty 

 nest and rear his young. And now, from swinging in the 

 tops of the oak trees, he comes down to a snug corner 

 under the thick shrubbery and weaves a cradle of weeds, 

 bark, moss, and grass, lining it with hairs and rootlets. 

 Each one of these rootlets must be pulled off" separately, 

 a task as great for his small strength as the uprooting of 

 a sapling would be for a man, yet the average nest re- 

 quires very many of them. A nest found near Rowar- 

 dennan. May 26, contained three nearly fledged young 

 and two infertile eggs. It was a typical nest, except 

 that a large amount of moss was used in its construction 

 and only a few rootlets. The location was also some- 

 what singular, it being squeezed between a stone and a 

 clump of weeds and lying partly under the overhanging 

 stone. There was, of course, no way of determining the 

 age of these nestlings, but the under parts were still 

 somewhat bare when they scrambled out of the nest the 



