The Fox Sparrows 



NEST AND EGGS OF MONO FOX SPARROW, IN BUCK-THORN 



pleasant words into any betrayal of nesting secrets. Our camp was 

 pitched in a little grove of pines surrounded by abundant buck brush 

 (Ceanothus cordatus) mingled with a hardy species of wild currant and 

 overlooked, in turn, by scattering firs. Every morning we heard the 

 cheery peewit wheeo and the jumble of syllables with which the male 

 quickly checks his emotions. There were three or four pairs about. 

 They visited our camp daily for crumbs, and we saw them gather nesting 

 material, sometimes at our very feet. But though we searched every 

 sapling and thrashed about in the brush for hours, we saw never a trace 

 of a nest in that vicinity. The birds were baffling, maddening, spookish 

 — and urbane always. 



At a lower level we had better, or at least different, luck. Over 

 a stretch which parallel creeks had rendered liable to flood, we found a 

 virtual colony of these crafty innocents. The bottom here was over- 

 shadowed by towering firs, but also half covered by quaking asp saplings, 

 each broken-backed from the insufferable weight of winter snows. In 

 these twisted knots of vegetable agony, or else upon prostrate or half 

 recumbent masses of willow stems, the "Thick-bills" (megarhyncha or 



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