Jan. 1903 I 
THE CONDOR 
13 
The next season I saw several of the birds but found no nests. In March, 1901, 
in company with Nathan Hargrave of Banning, I made a trip to Toros and Mar- 
tinez, thirty and thirty-five miles southeast of Palm Springs, and from fifty to one 
hundred feet below sea level. Here we saw several pairs and found two incomplete 
nests, and one containing two fresh eggs. All were in mesquite trees from three to 
eight feet from the ground. The birds were quite numerous and tame around the 
home of a Moravian missionary living at Martinez, and amused themselves by pull- 
ing up young alfalfa and millet that he was trying to raise. A few days later, March 
24, at Palm Springs, I found in a desert shrub a nest with two fresh eggs. 
In the winter of 1902 the birds were quite common at Palm Springs, six pairs 
being noted one day. In fact there were “all kinds of towhees’’ around that winter. 
One day, in the immediate neighborhood, half a mile from town, I saw the Califor- 
nia towhee {Pipilo crissalis senicula,) spurred towhee {P. maculatus megalonyx), 
Abert towhee {P. aberti), and the green-tailed towhee {Oreospiza chloriira). 
On April 17, 1902, I found a nest in a de.sert bush containing two infertile eggs 
and a young bird. Two days later I took a set of three partly incubated eggs from 
a nest in a pepper tree. April 25 and 30 I found two nests in orange trees contain- 
ing respectively three and four eggs each, and May ii and 22, I found in orange 
trees two nests with three eggs each. The last two nests found were second sets, 
the birds moving a few yards from the first nests. Three seems the usual number of 
eggs in a set, four being found only in the one instance. Some of the birds were 
rather close sitters, while others slipped from the nest at my first appearance. The 
male birds exhibited some concern, hopping about in a nearby bush or tree and 
chirping uneasily. 
The composition of the nests varied according to location. Those found in the 
desert bushes, three nests, were some distance from any house and were composed 
of coarse bark and a few grass stems and lined with fine bark. The other nests 
were in an orchard not far from a dwelling house and a barn and their composition 
differed from the other three. The nest found in the pepper tree was made of cot- 
tonwood bark, pieces of paper, grevillia leaves, and strips of gunny-sack and old 
overalls, and was lined with hor.se hair and fine bark. The nests in the orange 
trees were quite similar, varying only in detail. One was lined mostl}^ with an old 
white-wash brush, pulled apart of course. One had much paper, in large pieces, 
jute, and cotton twine in the walls; while another displayed a fancy colored tomato 
can label. All were from five to ten feet from the ground. 
Palm Springs seems the western limit of their range though they may occasion- 
ally stray as far as Whitewater, ten miles further west, where there are a few mes- 
quite trees. But I have never seen one west of Palm Springs. 
The Author of “Birds of North and Middle America.” 
D uring 1903, The condor win publish in each issue the portrait of an east- 
ern ornithologist, that the Cooper Club may become better acquainted, as it 
were, with those men, whose work is already so well and deservedly known. 
We therefore take pleasure in opening the series with the portrait of Mr. Robert 
Ridgway, whose work, the “Birds of North and Middle America,” besides marking 
a distinct advance in the progress of systematic ornithology, at once places its 
author in the lead of contemporary systematic ornithologists. We believe we do 
