May, 1921 NESTING OF THE STEPHENS FOX SPARROW 81 
the grouna. We also surmised that probably they were close sitters or else left 
the nest long before the collector approached near, or that perhaps they nested 
much earlier in the spring than the time when we were able to go to their nesting 
erounds. { ee 
The spring of 1919, two fellew Club members, Gordon Nicholson, ot Up- 
land, and S. Rich, of Claremont, accompanied me to Big Bear on May 30, wish- 
ing, but I must say not very hopefully, that we would find the nest of the Ste- 
phens Fox Sparrow. Anyway we would almost certainly find such nests as the 
Wright Flycatcher and Green-tailed Towhee in our hunting, so that our wori 
would not be without some results. 
On the afternoon of May 31 we started to prospect carefully through a likely 
looking patch of mountain misery, oftentimes called buckthorn, near the lake 
shore; and to prospect means to examine every bush carefully. Stephens Fox 
Sparrows and Green-tailed Towhees were singing, Wright Flycatchers twitter- 
y 
abe LM 
Wy 
GOEL oan A 
Y 
E Wy 
f VA iy, 
a, ' Jo 
y Wl 5 
y, 4 
Fig. 16. STEPHENS Fox SPARROW APPROACHING NEST; BIG BEAR LAKE, 
SAN BERNARDINO MOUNTAINS. 
ing, Calliope Hummingbirds darting here and there, with an occasional Ashy 
Kinglet and many Audubon Warblers busy in the pines above us. We had not 
gone far until we kicked out a rather young fox sparrow from the brush. and 
then another. The parents were near at hand and played the broken-wing trie 
to perfection in their attempts to coax us away, all the while uttering their me- 
tale ‘‘ehip’’. <A little farther on, while I was examining a nest of the Wright 
Flycatcher, Nicholson shouted, ‘‘I have a Stephens on a nest’’; so to him goes 
the credit of our first nest. This was three feet up in a eroteh of a buckthorn 
bush. One of the parents was sitting; in fact the bird sat so close that she (it 
may have been the male) did not flush until I was about a foot from her. The 
nest contained one fresh egg, which we left, hoping for a complete set. Luck 
was with us and the nest with three eggs was collected June 2. 
This nest was 
poorly hidden, being comparatively easy to see from the edge of the 
brush. Sinee 
