i6o 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



One comical incident occurred while I was waiting for 

 the birds to lose their fear of me. A chipmunk entered 

 the niche in which I was sitting, from the rear, and 

 crawled on my shoulder without suspecting that anything 

 so motionless could be alive. As I turned my head to 

 look at him he nearly had heart failure. He let out a 

 shriek and started out the way he had come, fell down 

 the embankment and remembered very urgent business 

 elsewhere. As he was passing along a big slab of granite, 

 a full-grown alligator lizard was coming along on the 

 other side. Both were in hot haste and neither could see 

 the other until they met at the corner. Both of them 

 simultaneously leaped and collided in mid-air, the lizard 

 folding his long claws around the chipmunk as they rolled 

 over. They picked themselves up in much disgust to 

 pursue their separate ways, and the chipmunk, at least, 

 must have considered his experiences a very peculiar 

 chapter of accidents. He was wound up for a long run 

 when I last saw him. 



Not far from the same place, I found a mountain 

 chickadee's (Penthestes gambeli) nest in an abandoned 

 woodpecker hole about ten feet from the ground. They 

 were building at the time, for they kept coming with 

 nesting material, mostly feathers, in their bills. My pres- 

 ence immediately under the hole did not seem to worry 

 them greatly, for they paid very little attention to me. 

 Once, when one of them stayed in the hole an uncom- 

 monly long time, I hammered on the trunk of the tree 

 with a stick. Presently, what seemed to be the female 

 stuck her head out of the hole and, with more curiosity 

 than alarm, looked down to see what could be the matter. 

 I obtained two excellent photographs of them perched on 

 their doorstep. The white superciliary line which breaks 

 the jet black cap of the mountain chickadee gives him 

 quite a harlequinish appearance, especially when, in quest 

 of insects, he dangles upside down from the tips of pine 

 twigs. 



The whistling of this chickadee is one of the most strik- 

 ing bird notes one hears in the Sierra Nevada. It seems 



