Sept., 1912 DISCOVERY OF NEST AND EGGS OF CALIFORNIA PINE GROSBEAK 169 
Personally, however, I was not greatly influenced by the findings of either 
Price or Cones, for while I considered them both to be correct in their state- 
ments I further believed Price had simply found the young of late, and Coues of 
early, breeding birds. Being of this impression I had nearly always visited the 
region during the month of June; for I could see no reason why the nesting 
time of Pinicola should be so radically different from 95 percent of the Sierran 
avi-fauna, which nests between May 15 and June 30, and especially as the re- 
maining five percent consisted of such remarkably early nesting birds as the 
Clarke Nutcracker, Canada Goose, American Merganser and some of the Rap- 
tores. 
The fact of Pinicola being resident, or at least migrating only a short 
distance, too, seemed to indicate that the time of nesting would be rather earlier 
than later, notwithstanding the high altitude of its home; for being undoubtedly 
a tree-nesting bird and arboreal in its habits it did not seem that it would be so 
Fig. 68. “jIM” AND HEINEMANN ROUNDING A PRECIPITOUS 
MOUNTAIN SIDE AT 6500 FEET ALTITUDE 
greatly affected by the depth of snow on the ground, or other severe climatic 
conditions, as to delay nesting a month later than the majority of species in the 
same habitat. Littlejohn suggested that if there was a delay it might be caused 
by the lack of some certain food supply for the young. To me, however, this 
explanation did not seem tenable. 
While our own observations rather favored Price's theory in the respect 
that no young of the year were noted in June or early July, yet on the other hand 
they also favored Coues’ in that we found no birds engaged in nest building in 
late June or early July which according to Price would be the proper sea.son for 
such operations. In fact, as before stated, we found at all dates the birds ap- 
parently leading a sort of Bohemian life; but I accounted for this pelasgic 
habitus by the fact that as the extreme limits of the nesting season of most Sierran 
birds extended from May 10 to July 15, it allowed them considerable latitude in 
this respect. 
