60 THE CONDOR Vol. XXI 
a pale bluish green sparingly marked with dark brown spots (some of which 
are smeared) and with small lavender markings principally at the larger ends. 
Another nest containing four young a few days old was found on Mareh — 
18. This was in a tall rugged fir growing on the edge of a rocky bluff. The 
nest was situated eight feet from the trunk on a_ stout limb forty feet above 
the ground and was quite invisible from below. While hunting carefully over 
this hillside, stopping frequently for ten-minute intervals to watch for cross- 
bills, the very quiet female flew into a tree a few yards from me and after a 
wait of five minutes flew directly to the nest. The young were naked save for 
small patches of filamentous gray down on the head and back. The bill and 
gape were conspicuously yellow. One of these nestlings was taken and an ex- 
amination of the stomach showed a mass of softened fir seeds. 
With the rush of migrants in the latter part of April and May, my interest 
in crossbills rather flagged, although it was noted that most of the birds were 
paired and very quiet. On June 14, small flocks appeared in the fringe of pop- 
lars along the lake shore in front of my house. This piece of brush is under 
almost daily observation and no crossbills had ever been seen there before. 
They were feeding on green choke-cherries and tiny salmon-colored lepidop- 
terous larvae that crawled on the under sides of the poplar leaves. To reach: 
these the birds hang head downward in the position they often assume when 
extracting fir seeds from the cones. . 
All day long small flocks were flying up and down the road and alighting 
in the trees. It is likely that they were moving to new feeding grounds as none 
were seen the next morning or during the days following. Probably sixty birds 
were seen during the day. Of these at least forty were red males in the moult 
and the rest were adult females and juvenals in the striped plumage. 
Okanagan Landing, British Columbia, January 21, 1919. 
NOTES ON THE NESTING OF TWO LITTLE-KNOWN SPECIES 
OF PETREL 
By GEORGE WILLETT 
winter of 1912-13, I was much interested in observing the nesting hab- 
its of two species of petrel, Ptcrodroma hypoleuca and Oceanodroma 
tristrana. As I have never seen a published description of the nest and eggs 
of either of these birds, the following notes may be worth recording. 
The White-breasted Petrel (Pterodroma hypoleuca) is an abundant nest- 
ing bird on Laysan, Lisianski and Midway islands, Pearl and Hermes Reef, and 
French Frigate Shoal. It is the most abundant nesting bird on the Hawaiian 
Bird Reservation, there being on Laysan Island alone, probably not less than 
20,000 pairs. It was already present on the island at the time of our arrival, 
December 22, 1912, and from this time until January 7 following, the air at 
night fairly swarmed with the birds. After this date, while still abundant, the 
numbers in the air decreased considerably as the birds began to incubate their 
eggs. Laying commenced the first week in January and was at its height 
about January 20. 
W IiILE stationed on Laysan Island, Hawaiian Archipelago, during the 
