Preface 



SINCE the dawn of the scientific era the study of birds, ornithology, has occupied 

 an honorable place. Men like Linnaeus, Brisson and Cuvier, Temminck, Vieillot, Forbes 

 and Gray, and more recently, Gadow, Evans and Hartert, Sharpe, Ridgway, Oberholser 

 and Grinnell, have expounded its technique; while apostles like Audubon and Gould, 

 Baird, Newton and Coues, Hudson. Chapman and Beebe, have published its gospel and 

 immortalized its claims. Without claiming either the technical equipment of a Ridg- 

 way or the apostolic fervor of an Audubon, the author has tried nevertheless to do a 

 rough justice to the dual claims of descriptive science and of artistic interpretation in 

 a field which he realizes to be singularly favored, not alone for the variety and wealth 

 of its bird life, but for the number and quality of its human inhabitants. As a citizen 

 by choice of the Golden State, the writer can truly say that California seems to offer 

 unparalleled advantages for bird study. Indeed, its range of avian interest is fairly- 

 typified by the fact that within its borders a bird of modest powers, as a Clark Nut- 

 cracker, might breakfast (somewhat sparingly) at the lowest point upon the American 

 continent, viz., in the Death Valley, and lunch (even more austerely) upon the highest 

 point of land in the United States, viz., the summit of Mt. Whitney, 14,501 feet above 

 the level of the sea. California is the land of contrasts, and the description of its 

 vividly contrasting and kaleidoscopic bird-life is, perhaps, the most privileged task 

 which might fall to the lot of an ornithologist. 



It is the province of this work to appreciate and, so far as possible, to express, not 

 alone the conceptual entities of science called species, but the very persons and lives 

 of those hundreds of millions of our fellow travelers and sojourners, called birds, the 

 birds of California. To this end the birds have been viewed not alone through the 

 rigid eye of science, but through the more roving, or tolerant, or even penetrating eye 

 of the poet, the interpreter, the apologist — the mystic even — the at-all-times bird-lover. 



With such a broad claim of latitude, it goes without saying that "The Birds of 

 California" is anything but "complete," in the sense of having said all that might be 

 said about any given species. Our effort has been rather to present a conspectus of 

 bird-life in California in its true proportions of interest. The commoner or more impor- 

 tant species have been allowed a much greater space, precisely on this account, that they 

 are common and important. Nor is it possible to claim completeness on the ground 

 that all the conclusions of other workers are herein recorded. While it is true that all 

 the major sources of information have been catalogued and consulted, it remains true 

 also that this work is essentially an original and personal contribution. The author 

 is a poor compiler. There are many who are gifted in this direction, and they have 

 performed valuable service. Yet we have had so many digests and rehashes and 

 meticulous accumulations of disconnected notes, that it has seemed worth while, for 



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