Passing to the tribe of insectivorous perching-birds — the song- 

 sters of wood and meadow — we find the hst in this district a short 

 one ; yet representatives of many kinds familiar in the south resort to 

 these far northern valleys and hills to rear their young during the 

 brief season of warmth allotted to them for that purpose. Among these 

 are several flycatchers, the first on the list being the phoebe. It is 

 especially welcome because it settles at once in the villages and 

 about the miners' cabins, and dares, with engaging confidence, to place 

 its nest of mud and moss upon the projecting end of some house-log, 

 or beneath the porch or eaves. Where rocky cliffs border the Yukon 

 the phoebes build their nests on the ledges, as seems to have been 

 their primitive custom everywhere. Their highway of migration is 

 along the course of the great river. 



The olive-sided flycatcher, which one would expect to find here, 

 does not seem to go much north of British Columbia. The plaintive 

 call of Richardson's, or the Alaska, wood pewee, is to be heard in 

 summer even beyond the Arctic Circle, and its eggs may be looked 

 for in July. The alder and Hammond's flycatchers are numerous in 

 this district wherever thickets of alders and willows grow in warm 

 valleys. 



Steller's jay occasionally follows the Yukon north to its great 

 bend near the international boundary. The jay of Alaska, however, is 

 the "smoky" form (fumifrons) of the Canada jay, known to everyone 

 by such names as whisky jack, camp-robber, moose-bird, and the 

 like. It is as bold in its nest-making as in other things, and often 

 lays eggs which must hatch in a temperature below zero. Joseph 

 Grinnell gives a graphic account of its nesting, supplementing the 

 .amusing story told in Mr. Nelson's Report of the superstitions fear 

 the natives formerly felt toward disturbing the nests of these birds, 

 which, they believed would revenge themselves by prolonging the 

 winter. Mr. Grinnell writes : 



Toward spring the jays became remarkably reclusive, and their visits 

 around camp were less and less frequent. I suspected that by the middle of 

 March they would nest, and I consequently spent much time in fruitless 

 search. . Finally I saw a jay with a large bunch of white down in 



its bill, flying back along the timber. . Not until May 13th, however, 



did I Pnally find an occupied jay's nest, and its discovery then was by mere 

 accident. It was twelve feet up in a small spruce amongst a clump of larger 

 ones on a low ridge. There were no "tell-tale sticks and twigs on the snow 

 beneath," as Nelson notes, and iri fact nothing to indicate its location. The 

 nest rested on several horizontal or slightly drooping branches against the 

 south side of the main trunk. . . The walls and bottom consisted' of 



a closely felted mass of black hair-like lichen, many short bits of spruce 

 twigs, feathers of ptarmigan and hawk owl, strips of a fibrous bark, and a 

 few grasses. The interior was lined with the softest and finest grained 

 material. The whole fabric is of such a quality as to accomplish the greatest 

 conservation of warmth, which certainly must be necessary where incubation 

 is carried on in below zero weather. 



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