July, 1922 FROM FIELD AND STUDY 137 
from the two females. The noisy bird proved to be a male and seemed to have a quarrel 
with one of the females. He would stop all his racket and go to feeding; suddenly he 
would start scolding, drive the female from her feeding place, stop scolding and go to 
feeding there himself. We saw him do this several times before we left to see what was 
in a nest of a Black-headed Grosbeak nearby. 
From there we went in search of a Western Winter Wren’s nest, without suc- 
cess. All of this time we could hear that noisy male Evening Grosbeak at intervals. So 
back we went, to where the grosbeaks were feeding. We were back several minutes 
before the quiet male and female flew to another part of the timber. This seemed to set 
the noisy male agoing; he drove the female across several trees before she disappeared 
in a thick cluster of small branches near the top of a white fir. The male landed about 
twenty feet lower down, in the same tree, and all his racket stopped. In a short while 
he flew in the direction taken by the other pair, and was not followed by the female. 
Up the tree I went and was within twenty feet from where the female disappeared 
when Moore called, “there she goes’, and down she came to meet me. Up to the cluster 
of branches I went; there was the nest, placed in a crotch formed by two branches 
crossing, and was within reaching distance. The nest was made of dry twigs, that look- 
ed as if they were broken by the birds from a near-by dead fir. It was thickly lined with 
fine dry roots. ; 
The nest contained four eggs, incubation from just right to nearly hatching. The 
eggs look like Red-winged Blackbirds’, and the extremes measured in inches .50 to .64 
by .87 to .98. All the time I was at the nest, the female made all the racket the male had 
previously made, besides snapping her beak. Her scolding must have been heard for 
quite a distance, but the male did not return Jouwn M. Davis, Eureka, California, March 
30, 1922. 
The Gray Flycatcher in the White Mountains of California.—The appearance of 
the Gray Flycatcher (Empidonax griseus) in southern California in migration and in 
winter, and its disappearance during the breeding season, has for many years been a 
problem for which there seemed no logical solution. Until recently, there has been no 
basis of data which would serve to trace its movements in California, after it passes 
through the San Diegan district as a common spring migrant. However, the recently 
published records by Oberholser, of the summer occurrence of griseus in Nevada (Auk, 
Xxxv1I, 1920, p. 133), and in eastern Oregon (Condor, xx11, 1920, p. 37), coupled with the 
specimens recorded below, seem to shed a little light.on the subject. There are, in the 
Dickey collection, four specimens of this flycatcher, taken by Laurence M. Huey and 
Mrs. May Canfield, in the White Mountains of east-central California. Three of these are 
nearly full grown juveniles, two of which were taken at McCloud Camp, Mono County, at 
an altitude of 10,000 feet, August 27, and the third on Wyman Creek, Inyo County, at 
8000 feet, September 4. The fourth is also a juvenile, just coming into first fall plum- 
age, and was collected on Wyman Creek, at 8000 feet, on September 3, 1921. The infer- 
ence is that these birds were hatched somewhere in the vicinity, for scarcely-grown 
juveniles would hardly have undertaken any extensive wandering. 
It would therefore seem that the Gray Flycatcher, after leaving the San Diegan 
district, passes north-eastward to the desert ranges to breed. The fact that this region 
has been but sparingly worked by collectors, accounts, in our belief, for the present scar- 
city of summer records. These remarks have, of course, nothing to do with the indi- 
viduals of this species which breed in Lower California, but they do apparently solve 
the seeming vagaries of movement in the California population of griseus.—D. R. DIcKEY 
and A. J. van Rosse, Pasadena, California, May 30, 1922. 
A Third Record of the Gray-headed Junco in California.—The first records of an 
unexpected bird in any arbitrary geographic area are necessarily so casual in their very 
nature as to suggest the advisability of publishing further confirmatory notes. Dr. 
Joseph Grinnell (Pasadena Acad. Sci., Pub. 2, 1898, p. 38), and Mr. Austin Paul Smith 
(Condor, 1x, 1907, p. 199) have already called attention to the occasional presence of 
Junco caniceps in California. Recent experience leads the writer to believe that this 
species 1S a more regular winter visitant to California than the previous records suggest, 
