184 
Vol. XIII 
SOME ROBINS’ AND MOURNING DOVES’ NESTS IN THE ROWER 
YAKIMA VALLEY, WASHINGTON 
By' CLARENCE HAMILTON KENNEDY 
WITH TWO ITTTSTRATIONS BY THK AUTHOR 
W HEN I first came into the Yakima Valley, I was pleased to be greeted by 
an old friend, the robin {^Planesticus niigratorius propinqiius) , slightly 
paler than his eastern relative and with the same cheerful note and mien; 
but I was surprised to see pair a complacently building a nest on a beam in a cow 
Fig. 5.5. A MOURNING DOVE’S NEST ON A POST 
shed. However, on considering further I ceased to wonder. The Lower Yakima 
Valley, lying as it does in the Upper Sonoran Zone, is a sage-brush desert except 
along the streams, where are thickets of willows and cottonwoods, and in its more 
level portions, where are now many square miles of irrigated fields and orchards. 
Because of the past scarcity of timber, the robins and also Mourning Doves 
{Zeiiaidura macroura carolinensis) appear to have lost to some extent their desire 
and ability to build in trees. Now that large areas of the valley are covered 
with orchards and that shade trees are numerous, they yet occasionally revert to 
their former habit of building in places other than trees. It is possible, though, 
that as irrigation is recent here, the robins and doves have spread out from their 
formerly more restricted habitat about the water holes and streams, into the sur- 
