364 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919. 
bushes are cleared ; then on powerful wing it travels swiftly and far, 
at length sailing like the prairie hen and disappearing over a knoll 
or down into the monotonous expanse of sagebrush. At the nuptial 
season the curious actions of the male draw more than casual atten- 
tion, as with tail spread, neck and fore-breast enormously inflated 
and thrown forward till they brush the ground, he moves pom- 
pously about. Besides the sage grouse, the sagebrush country has 
other avian inhabitants; the abundant, widely distributed lark 
sparrow starts up all along the roadside, displaying its prettily pat- 
terned tail as it flies, or from over in the brush regales the listener 
with its varied song; the more humble Brewer sparrow sings its 
melodious little lay, or, perhaps, too anxious, betrays the secret of 
its home in some near-by bush; the sage sparrow, becomingly at- 
tired in black, white, and gray, flits through the shrubbery or runs 
rapidly along the ground; the trim green-tailed towhee slmlks 
elusively, almost mouse-like, under the bushes, or from some hidden 
j)erch sends forth its rhythmical notes; and the sage thrasher may 
be heard in vivacious song, or perchance seen unobtrusively leaving 
its well-hidden nest. 
In the grass or rushes bordering the springs and ponds the little 
western savanna sparrow is often to be found at home, and among 
the tules or in the thickets along the streams the western yellow- 
throat and the song sparrow find congenial surroundings, though 
neither is by any means so common as in the East. 
The wide expanse of the Great Salt Lake, its mountainous islands, 
its muddy or stony shores, the level lands along its borders, white 
with salt and alkali, and the fields in the valley, made fertile by the 
magic of irrigation, have each a particular attraction for birds. 
Graceful terns, ducks of many kinds, together with grebes, among 
them the pied-billed, frequent the open water or the marshes, while 
multitudes of wading birds range the beach and spread out over the 
fiats. Down by the margin of the lake, over the meadows and the 
marshes, the bittern heavily files, or stalks about in dignified, secre- 
tive, yet apparantly nonchalant way, pausing now and then to utter, 
with curious, not to say painfully ridiculous, contortions, its hollow, 
strangely resonant notes, but ceasing and turning to a statue well- 
nigh invisible at the slightest hint of danger. The wild-eyed, wild- 
voiced, wild-mannered long-billed curlew guards its preserve along 
the lake with jealous care, and at any act of trespass pours forth a 
torrent of abuse that is intended to be very threatening, but under the 
circumstances is vastly amusing. There are bright-plumaged orioles 
in the cottonwoods ; sparrows and yellow-throats in the thickets along 
the sloughs ; house wrens about the dwellings ; western meadowlarks 
that rise from the meadow where the bobolink soars and sings ; and 
