Jan., 1919 THE SOLITAIRES OF SHASTA 17 
snow. I set to work in good earnest examining the bases, and had accomplished 
nothing in an hour’s work, so sat down on a rock for a cold bite of lunch, de- 
termined to see if I could get any lead. I did see a bird flit about 75 yards up 
the hill, but it disappeared against, or behind, a tree bole and I saw nothing more 
of it. These birds have a marvelous way of shpping around unobserved. The 
next 1 knew a male was singing overhead 125 feet up. By and by I had the rare 
pleasure of seeing and hearing the ecstatic song flight of the male. From a 
height well above the treetops and 300 feet above the earth, he descended, slowly, 
in a great spiral, with fluttering wings. More than ever he looked lke a Mock- 
ingbird, except that his action did not savor of the grotesque. The song torrent - 
was light and sprightly in character, reminding me more of the breathless rhap- 
sody of the Lark Sparrow than of the measured accents of the Thrush. This 
Fig. 3. NEST AND EGGS OF TOWNSEND SOLITAIRE; V149/3-16. 
exercise over, the bird descended through the trees and allowed himself to be 
seen on several occasions in an open bit about a hundred yards down the hill. 
Several times he visited the ground, and twice I saw another bird of the same 
species get up. Once there was quite a spirited passage, a bug and a hug as near 
as I could make out, after which the mysterious second bird disappeared by a 
dive to earth. I’m on to their game this time, I guess. 
With quite a complacent feeling I worked my way down to the scene after 
lunch. In my confidence I even stopped to take off my sopping boots and dry 
them, preparatory to ‘‘landing’’ the nest. The male improved the occasion by 
betraying his anxiety in various ways—first by little sotto voce snatches of song 
sntended for the ear of the sitcing female, and then by that weird pendulum 
creak, whose qualities I have so often remarked. This sound is really indeserib- 
able, yet it invites renewed effort at comparison. It has been called a ‘‘bell 
