r 
) 
; 
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i 
1876.] Californian Garden Birds. 91 
raised a brood of young under the roof of the adjoining house, 
and all of them have frequented the garden much after May 4th. 
The well-known summer yellow-bird (Dendreca æœstiva) arrived 
April 20th, and a pair have a nest in the garden, though its site 
has not yet been discovered. 
The barn swallow (Hirundo horreorum) builds, as elsewhere, in 
the barns, against rafters, etc., arriving March 19th. The cliff 
swallow (Hirundo lunifrons) builds under eaves of barns and 
houses much more abundantly than the last. I saw two instances 
in town where bluebirds took possession of nests of this bird 
about the 15th of March, and successfully held them against the 
owners, which returned from the south on the 24th. A pair of 
white-bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor var. vespertina Cooper) 
took possession of a little bird- house which I put upon a post 
twelve feet high, near the house, and have built and laid eggs in 
it since April 30th. (Some others were building in town after 
their arrival three months earlier.) They had to drive off a 
saucy wren which had a nest near by, but had tried to hold two 
houses by building a sham nest in this one, and often endeavored 
to tear. down the swallows’ nest in their absence. 
This western variety of the H. bicolor is larger and bluer than 
the eastern, though so far without a distinctive name. I found 
it breeding in 1873 as far south as latitude 35°, in Ventura County, 
Cal., near the coast. A house wren (Troglodytes edon var. Park- 
manni), as just remarked, built in a bird-house placed on the end 
of the porch. This species arrived March 30th, though a few win- 
ter within a hundred miles southward. The male of the pair men- 
tioned came to the garden about the 10th of April, and very m- 
dustriously worked at building a nest for two weeks before it per- 
suaded a female bird to remain. It sung constantly, but less 
finely than the eastern birds, from which its longer tail, never 
held vertically, further distinguishes it. i 
Two pairs of the house linnet ( Carpodacus frontalis var. rho- 
docolpus) have nests in a Monterey pine (P. insignis), another 
in a cypress, one under a plank placed in the forks of two trees 
for a swing to hang on, and one pair in a rose-bush covering the 
end of the porch, where children can look freely into it. This 
last had the first egg laid April. 22d; incubation began on 
the 25th, and the young hatched May 6th and 7th, requiring 
about eleven days. Although thousands are shot in the fruit sea- 
son on account of their destructiveness, neither the numbers nor 
the familiarity of this characteristic western bird seem to be dimin- 
