'the last half of July and the entire month of August, with various others_ of 

 their kind they may be found flitting about the buildings, or even coming 

 within the yard and up to the very doorsteps, their bright black eyes carefully 

 searching every inch of ground for morsels of food. In spring these birds 

 attain their breeding plumage by the wearing away of the grayish tips. . . . 

 In the north, before taking leave for their winter home, they gather in flocks 

 on the bushy borders of the woods, and their low, sweet chorus is heard 

 rising and falling as they tune their gentle pipes for the songs they are to 

 utter later in the season. This bird's power of song, however, is not great, 

 and its music is, perhaps, most pleasing when thus heard in chorus. 



The snow-bird (Junco) also breeds abundantly all along the 

 Yukon and its tributary valleys. "The slate-colored junco and the 

 western chipping sparrow,'' remarks Dr. Bishop, speaking of the 

 region about Fort Yukon, "were most common about the brush- 

 heaps left by the lumbermen, weed-grown clearings resulting from 

 forest-fires, and about, cabins or the towns. Every nest found was 

 sunk in the ground to the rim in an open place under a weed or a 

 tussock of grass." 



None of the varieties of the song sparrow goes so far north; but 

 its place is taken by Lincoln's sparrow, whose habits are similar, 

 and whose delightful singing is heard all over the wooded interior. 

 The fox sparrow, too, regales the ear in summer wherever trees or 

 bushes grow. 



Both the cliff and the barn swallows cheer the hearts of the 

 people in towns, as well as the residents in lonely miners' and pros- 

 pectors' cabins scattered through the mountains, placing their nests 

 confidingly under roofs as soon as these are provided for them ; yet 

 many colonies of both species inhabit the wild clififs. The tree 

 swallows, nesting in abandoned woodpecker-holes, and in hollow 

 stubs, are regular summer visitors, along with the violet-green and 

 the bank swallow^s ; the violet-green species customarily nests in 

 the cliffs, but Dr. Bishop records that several times he saw it entering 

 tunnels resembling those of bank swallows, great numbers of whose 

 burrows pitted the earthen banks along the Yukon. 



The Bohemian waxwing is a resident of northern Alaska, where 

 the first nest and eggs on record were obtained at Fort Yukon in 

 1861 by Robert Kennicott. This nest was placed in a spruce growing 

 at the edge of a swamp, and both it and the eggs much resembled 

 those of the familiar cedar-bird. Bishop furnished an interesting note 

 on this bird : 



Two males that we noticed while descending Thirty-Mile River were 

 perched on the topmost sprays of tall spruces, uttering a lisping whistle at 

 frequent intervals. One of them flew after a passing insect in the manner 

 of a flycatcher. Flocks were easily approached, and when one bird was 

 shot the rest would scatter, and each would alight on the top branch of some 

 spruce and utter a characteristic call-note.' This note, which we often hear 



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