The Yellowthroats 



Angeles, shouted, Greas'y wittles, greas'y wittles, grit! The lady who 

 must have been responsible for this outburst had neglected to Hooverize. 



But by far the most remarkable song in my experience came from 

 a locality in eastern Washington. We had just been listening to the 

 unwonted notes of a Desert Sparrow {Amphispiza bilineata deserticola) 

 some hundreds of miles out of its usual range, and were not unprepared 

 for shocks, when Hoo hee, chink i woo chu tip fell upon the ear. What! 

 a Slate-colored Sparrow here in the sage-brush ! Or is it, maybe, a Vesper, 

 grown precise? Again and again came the measured accents, clear, strong, 

 and sweet. Not till I had seen the mandibles of a Western Yellow- 

 throat, and that repeatedly, moving in perfect rhythm to the music, 

 could I believe so small a bird the author of this song. For fifteen 

 minutes the Warbler brought forth this alien strain, Hee-o chiti wo, 

 chu tip, or Hee oo chitiwew chu tipew, without once lapsing into ordinary 

 dialect. Wherever did he get it? 



Nests of the Yellowthroats are the commonplace of all swampy 

 localities — commonplace, yet never without interest, because of their 

 varied architecture and their diverse setting. A nest may be sunk 

 firmly into a damp tussock of grass barely clear of the ground or water, 

 or it may be lashed firmly to the stalks of an investing clump of cat- 

 tails, or it may be deftly hidden under a canopy of weed-tops a hundred 

 yards from water. The nest may be composed chiefly of brittle weathered 

 leaves of grass or sedge, so incoherent as to be scarcely removable, or 

 else it may be settled into a veritable fortress of coiled cattail leaves, 

 sturdy and dependable. The lining, too, may be of coiled grasses 

 almost as light in color as the speckled white eggs which they support, 

 or it may be of black horsehair, throwing the jewels into prized relief. 



While fully two-thirds of all Yellowthroat nests are placed within 

 a stone's throw of water and at levels not over three feet, an observer 

 in Lake County has given us a remarkable account 1 of the effect of 

 the heavy rains of 1903-4 upon the nesting at Clear Lake. The Yellow- 

 throats almost forswore nesting in the tules altogether, and sought 

 shelter both by elevation and by retreat from the water's edge. Of 

 sixty nests examined between May 14th and July 12th, 1904, only 

 five were held to be typical. One pair of birds revamped a blackbird's 

 nest for occupation. Another placed its nest hard against the side 

 of a dwelling house under cover of a protecting vine. Some, in their 

 panic, went as much as three hundred yards from water; and of the 

 tree-nesters the record pair built in a eucalyptus tree at a height of 

 nearly twenty-three feet above the ground. 



'A. W. Johnson in "The Condor." Vol. VI., Sept., 1904, pp. 129-131. 



509 



