Sept, 1912 
FROM FIELD AND STUDY 
197 
ing stormy weather. A pyramid miners’ tent covering a space of six and one half by seven 
feet was found to give plenty of room for all purposes. The floor is of boards and has a 
trap door, so that wet coat and hat may be removed below and left there, the tent being 
entered by a ladder. We had a snow storm just after putting this up, and it was very much 
less damp, and with better ventilation than any ground camp I have occupied, as the snow 
fell away, instead of piling up around the tent. 
A brush fence is often built around tents here, but in hot weather this increases the heat, 
besides causing danger from fire. My camp was safe and very comfortable in the hottest 
weather, as the brush was cut and burned for fifty feet all around, making it practically fire- 
proof. 
It has caused more or less local comment, one remark being that it must be tiresome 
to live in such a small space, which of course cannot cause anytliing but a smile from a, 
field ornithologist. The weather here is mostly fine, if windy, so that I have “all out of 
doors” to live in. I simply sleep and occasionally work in the tent, the "kitchen” being at 
a little distance and roofed over with boards. 
The wildest available locality was selected, my judgment of the place being confirmed 
by a pftir of Pileated Woodpeckers raising their brood nearby. The nest was certainly not 
Fig. 80. AERIAL CAMP IN THE WOODS OF SOUTHERN OREGON, 
AS CONTRIVED BY C. W. BOWLES 
more than 200 yards away, yet I was never able to catch them going to it. They seemed 
to take special delight in parading their young in Indian file, on all the trees around my 
camp, as often on the trees supporting it as anywhere else. From May 15 to 20 seems to be 
about the best time for nearly fresh eggs in this lattitude. 
The camp was in a stretch of heavy oak, fir and pine timber one mile long and a half 
mile wide, on a level bench near a steep bank, about fifty feet high, at the foot of which 
are the Illinois River and a large swamp covered with pines, cottonwoods and brush. 
Monotony at night was dispelled by all kinds of noises, great horned, screech and pigmy 
owls being conspicuous, but there seemed to be only one pair each of the first and last 
named. 
Late in the summer what were probably a pair of long ears (had a glimpse of one in 
daylight) kept up their cries for hours at a time. It seemed like the harsh grinding of the 
brake on a heavy cart wheel going down hill, but was in single, monotonous notes, about 
every forty to sixty seconds, and sounded like “creak — creak— creak”, ad lib., as the doctors 
say. The pigmys at first started calling pretty much anywhere in the neighborhood, but 
finally the sound started every evening from aliout the same place for one of each series of 
