52 THE CONDOR Vol. XIX 



Like other Jays the Coast Jays are unpopular with their neighbors and 

 one morning I saw a pair of Black-headed Grosbeaks chase one up and down 

 the winding stair of a dead tree, the irate female getting so close to him that 

 it looked as if she pecked him on the back. In the neighborhood in which the 

 Grosbeaks seemed so much at home, one was seen on a mossy log by the brook 

 that ran through the woods, shaking its wings dry, and one on a delicate huck- 

 leberry bush leaning over to pick off the red berries. They were seen a great 

 deal in the spruces on the edges of the clearings and also well up in the high 

 trees in the woods, and as they flew from tree to tree the white patch at the 

 base of the wing quills and also the white tail coverts showed to advantage. 



The Grosbeaks were so often seen in the same trees with the Western Tan- 

 agers, who bathed from the same brook, that the songs of the two had to be 

 distinguished. The Tanager's rough-edged song is totally different from the 

 best, most roundly modulated one, and when the Tanager's call — 

 or piterick-^is incorporated in his song as is often the case, it can be 

 placed on the instant. When this is left out, however, the disjointed song with 

 its pendulum rhythm closely resembling that of the Scarlet Tanager, may be 

 confused with the poorest, roughest song of the Grosbeak. 



The red of the Tanager's head in the timber makes a good recognition 

 mark, as I realized when catching a glint of red rods away through the woods ; 

 and on the outer edge of a spruce the yellow of his body gives a keen note of 

 color, surprisingly pleasing against its background of somber green. The yel- 

 low shows as he flies up from one branch to another — one that I saw flew up 

 and fluttered under a branch like a Kinglet — but when he sits still with wings 

 dropped the uncovered yellow of the back, as I was surprised to discover, loses 

 its color, becoming just a light oblong patch quite detached from the form of 

 the bird. The back of the female, an exquisitely harmonized bird with her 

 greens and yellows, fades out of sight against a sunlit hemlock. 



Besides these Jays, Grosbeaks, and Tanagers, birds of striking voice and 

 plumage, the woods held the thin-voiced Gairdner Woodpecker, noticeably 

 blacker than the Downy, and the demure dull-colored Western Wood Pewee 

 and Western Flycatcher, the grayish Pewee perching on a dead hemlock giving 

 its gentle tu-weer and the Flycatcher with its dull yellow breast moving about 

 in the greenery giving its soft se-wick. The small, characteristic beady note of 

 the California Brown Creeper was detected, though the bird itself was not dis- 

 covered. 



When watching the birds in the woods going and coming about their vari- 

 ous matters, I often discovered a Rufous Hummingbird on a high watch tower, 

 the very tip of a sliver projecting above a high stub, the animated brown mar- 

 ble pointed with a needle swaying from side to side, the brown tail sometimes 

 jetting in unison while the keen pin head eyes kept a vigilant outlook. Let an 

 insect pass and out would dart the Hummer. Sometimes when watching he sat 

 silent, sometimes he sang a squeaky little kick-ick-ick-ick-ali. As he sat on his 

 watch tower a puff of wind once blew up one of the elongated ends of his bur- 

 nished fiery gorget, showing its pattern. When the midget faced me for a 

 moment the center of his flaming gorget looked' almost black. The causes of 

 some of his actions had to be guessed at. When hovering over a moist gummy 

 spot on a spruce branch I imagined that he was looking for insects in the gum ; 

 and when, after acting as if about to alight on the bristly terminal spray of a 

 Sitka spruce, he flew off instead, I suspected that the prickly needles had 



