1876.] Californian Garden Birds. 93 
The western oriole (Icterus Bullockii) arrived here March 
31st. My statement in the Ornithology of California that they 
arrive at San Diego as early as March 1st applies only to a very 
few avant-courriers, as most of them reach there after the 15th. 
They reached Ventura County in 1873 about the 20th; but as I 
saw one in the November previous, a few may winter in Califor- 
nia, that being two months later than they usually leave. 
A pair built in a hanging branch of a gum-tree (Hucalyptus) 
in the garden, about thirty-five feet from the ground. The male 
was in the immature plumage (like the female), and another 
male skinned by me April 24th was similar, so that, like Icterus 
spurius, some of the males, if not all, require more than one year 
to obtain perfection, a fact not before recorded. Like the Icterus 
Baltimore and the other species as far as known, it probably re- 
quires three years, though the stages are not so very different as 
to have been called species, as with Icterus spurius and many 
tropical American forms. 
The following birds also built in other gardens in town, but I 
could not watch them so carefully. The western yellow-bellied 
fly-catcher (Hmpidonaz difficilis) arrived March 30th. One pair 
built early in May on a beam under a wagon-shed, in the man- 
ner of the pewees, but, pertinaciously retaining their woodland 
habits, tried to conceal the nest by a wall of green moss partly 
hanging over the edge of the beam and making it still more con- 
` spicuous by the contrast of color. Three other nests found along 
the neighboring creeks were built on slight projections among 
roots and stumps overhanging the water, from four to twenty 
feet above it, and all with the same green mossy parapets. I 
have identified the birds by shooting several. The differences in 
both young and adult birds between this and the eastern Æ. flavi- 
ventris pointed out in the North American Birds, iii. 363, as well 
as the entire difference in nesting and eggs described on page 
380, with which mine agree perfectly, seem to require a specific 
separation of the western birds, none being found intermediate. 
In the Ornithology of California, i. 328, I could not distinguish 
the western adult bird from the incomplete descriptions of the 
eastern, the young only having then been critically compared. 
The Empidonax pusillus of Northern California seems, how- 
ever, to graduate southward into the eastern var. Traillii as given 
by me, though I should have used the prior specific name. The 
nests and eggs described by me in the Ornithology of California, 
1, 330, probably belonged to pusillus, which I have not seen in 
this more open region. E. Hammondii is a more eastern form. 
