236 THE CONDOR Vol. XXI 
the bee, this tale would not have been written, and the writer would have been short an 
interesting nest and set of eggs of the Nuttall Woodpecker.—N. K. CARPENTER, Escondi- 
do, California, September 15, 1919. 
Second Occurrence of the Painted Bunting at Solomon, Saline County, Kansas.— 
A record of the nesting of the Painted Bunting (Passerina ciris) near Solomon, Kansas, 
was given in THE Conpor, for September, 1918. This year, 1919, I again saw one of the 
birds near the place where the nest and female were found last year. On June 30, 1919, 
a male was seen, and it was encountered a second time two days later. I am inclined to 
think the bird is of more than accidental occurrence in that part of the state and am 
strengthened in this belief by having seen three males near Chanute, Neosha County. 
One was seen July 23 and several times later until July 27, a second July 25, and a third 
July 27, each in a different locality, and several miles apart. I did not look for nests but 
think it likely that they could have been found, judging from the date of the 1918 nest 
(June 10) at Solomon. On August 8 still another male was seen just north of Altoona, 
Wilson County. From these records it would seem that the species occurs regularly 
farther north than was thought to be the case, or else, what is, perhaps, more likely, its 
range is being extended northward, possibly from an increase in numbers due to protec- 
tion. Other Kansas observers may be able to add to our records of the bird.—A. J. 
Kirn, Neodesha, Kansas, August 16, 1919. 
A Western Yellowthroat on the University of California Campus.—While working 
in the gallery of the M. V. Z., on the morning of May 21, 1919, my attention was attracted 
by a bird-song never before heard by me on or near the Campus. It was faint and direc- 
tionless through the walls, but I caught enough of it to be keen for an investigation. 
With the help of Miss Margaret Wythe, I listened from windows on various sides of the 
building—without, however, hearing the song. The moment I returned to work, I heard 
it, as faint and directionless as before. Another investigation followed, and another re- 
turn to work, and so on for half an hour, till I began to imagine that the ghost of a 
bird’s voice was trying to get my ornithological goat, as one might say. But at last, as i 
listened from an office window, a single clear and near example of the song reached my 
ears. It was an utterance in four sections, the first three being four-syllabled and exact- 
ly alike: pritisitta, pritisitta, pritisitta, prit, with accent on the “‘prit’”. I had never heard 
a Yellowthroat song of this exact syllabification, but the chief and important distinguish- 
ing character of the song of the species is, after all, its exact repetition of some sort of 
a two- or three- or four-syllabled “word”. Every individual Yellowthroat has quite a 
stock of different “words’, and some are likely to be different from any “words” one 
would hear another individual sing. Timbre, to be sure, is also a character of the Yel- 
lowthroat song—though it varies among and in individuals as widely as does “word’- 
form. The timbre of this song was hardly typical: it was unusually loose and liquid. 
The utterance was comparatively slow. Outside the building I found Dr. H. C. Bryant 
under a bay tree trying to get a look at the singer. He looked as puzzled as I had felt 
in the gallery. The bird would not show itself except as some sort of a restless flitting 
warbler with yellow on it somewhere. It went from tree to tree within a limited area 
round the Museum, returning again and again to trees already visited. It foraged mostly 
in the bay and pepper trees, but once flew to the top of a large live oak opposite Dr. 
Grinnell’s office window (a favorite place, by the way, for rare visitants to the Cam- 
pus). We finally decided, in despair, to enlist the services of our doughty field-collector, 
H. G. White, who soon settled the question by “collecting” the bird. It proved to be a 
Western Yellowthroat (Geothlypis trichas occidentalis)—another new record for the 
Campus, and one representing a race of Yellowthroat non-resident, and rare even as a 
transient, in the San Francisco Bay region. It is of interest to note that the bird was 
foraging exclusively in the high dry tree-tops—whereas one might rather have expected 
to find it fifty yards away in the tangle of vines and bushes along Strawberry Creek.— 
RicHARD Hunt, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Berkeley, California, August 1, 1919. 
Evidence as to the Food of the Wood Ibis.—The Wood Ibis (Mycteria americana), 
one of the rarer birds of our state, has long been noted as a bird of peculiar feeding hab- 
its. The account given by Audubon and cited by Coues in his “Birds of the Northwest” 
