218 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XIV 
former position of the road, and I had some difficulty to find my way. The 
road finally led northward and eastward, down into the Missouri Valley, through 
country not unlike that of the Gallatin Valley, seen the day before. I crossed 
the river on a long' bridge and entered the small town of Toston. Both the 
horse and I were hot, tired and hungry, so I decided to rest the remainder of the 
afternoon and ride on to Townsend in the cool of the evening. I put the horse 
in a livery barn and after lunch in a small restaurant, finding nothing of inter- 
est in the town, I strolled a little way along the river bank, and sat down in the 
shade of the cottonwoods. 
A pair of Western Kingbirds had a nest full of young in the fork of a cot- 
tonwood directly over my head. They started to scold me, but after a short 
time gave it up and went back to feeding the young again. Their scolding, 
however, brought out the other feathered inhabitants, consi,sting of several Rob- 
ins and Yellow AVarblers, a pair of Catbirds, a Western Wood Pewee, and a 
brilliantly colored Bullock Oriole. They watched me for a time but .soon went 
away and left me to watch the Kingbirds. The young were very noisy. They 
kept up a continual clatter all the time, varied only when the parents came with 
food when it became much louder. This nest was the first one I had seen in the 
fork of a cottonwood. The commonest location for the AVestern Kingbird’s 
nest in Montana seems to be between the cross arms of a telegraph pole. I had 
seen several such nests, near the railroad track at Logan the day before. AVhen 
built in such a place, one of the birds may usually be seen on guard, sitting on 
the telegraph wire within five or six feet of the nest. In fact, whenever I see a 
AA^estern Kingbird thus seated on a wire, I look for a nest nearby and am usually 
successful in finding it. Here in the Missouri A^alley the AA^estern Kingbird is 
decidedly commoner than the eastern species. The reverse is true in the Gal- 
latin Valley, where the elevation is some 700 feet higher, the factor which prob- 
ably causes the difference. 
After some time I wandered out on the bridge I had crossed. Cliff Swal- 
lows were nesting .somewhere beneath the bridge in large numbers. On the 
edge of the river not far from the bridge they were gathering mud for their 
nests, though it seemed to me rather late in the year for nest construction to be 
.still going on. Fifteen or twenty birds were gathered in one spot, gathering the 
mud. They poised daintily, only their feet and bills touching the mud, while 
their wings were wide-spread and constantly fluttering. 
In the evening I rode on. down the Missouri AMlley to Townsend, where I 
stopped for the night. On the way I was glad to see many Bobolinks, and in 
one place, several Lark Buntings, a bird quite common in some parts of Mon- 
tana, but with which I have yet to make intimate acquaintance. One of the 
Buntings favored me with a flight song, a performance I had never witnessed 
before. 
The next day I rode over a low divide between the Missouri and Prickly 
Pear valleys, crossing from Broadwater to Lewis and Clark County, and stop- 
])ing the next night at Helena. After leaving the Missouri Valley the road led 
for most of the way over a barren rocky stretch of country where there were 
no birds. AAHien I reached the Prickly Pear Valley it was the middle of the 
afternoon, when birds were silent and not stirring. I remember but one obser- 
vation that day that seems worth recording. An electric power line follows the 
road here for several miles, and near East Helena, I found beneath the wires, 
the dead body of a AA^ilson Phalarope. The bird had evidently killed itself by 
