40 
THE CONDOR 
Voi.. VI 
The lake was about one hundred by one hundred and twenty-five feet, lying 
in a hollow, all surrounded by the hills and its shores thickly covered with alders 
and small aspens, one tall charred spruce stump standing on the shore near the nest. 
I made up my mind when I saw the nest what my next Sunday’s work would 
be, and when Sunday, the 7th came, I went to the spot with the camera and took 
several photographs from different points of view. As I w'as going through the 
brush around the shore of the lake the bird flew off, and all the time I was there 
kept flying about overhead, often accompanied by her mate. After I finished 
there I visited a number of other lakes and saw' tw'O more cranes but found no nest. 
A few ducks also nest about some of these ponds though not so many as in 
past years. Large game was formerl}" very abundant here but has mostly been 
killed off or driven away and the birds are also much scarcer. 
Colorado Springs, Colo. 
Midwinter Birds at Palm Springs, California 
BY JOSEPH GRINNELI, 
T he small village called Palm Springs lies in Riverside county, California, 
about seven miles south of the Southern Pacific station of the same name. It 
is situated on the floor of the extreme western arm of the Colorado desert. 
This arm terminates on San Gorgonio Pass which separates the lofty San Bernar- 
dino range on the north from the precipitous San Jacinto mountains on the south. 
Palm Springs itself is close to the abrupt base of San Jacinto peak, and is at 
about four hundred feet elevation. But the desert sinks away gradually to the 
southeastw'ard until in places it is two hundred and fifty feet below sea-level. 
The plant-life of this belt is startling to a novice in its strangely adapted 
desert forms. In the vicinity of Palm Springs the desert floor is more or less 
closely dotted with several peculiar species of cacti, the creosote bush, screw-bean, 
mesquite and various Daleas, one of which is called locallj^ the smoke-bush, from 
the filmy bluish aspect presented by a thicket of it at a distance. At the mouths 
of canyons and in the desert in the vicinity of springs, grow clumps of giant 
palms, which give a tropical air to the landscape. Cottonwoods flourish wher- 
ever there is sufficient underground wmter supply. The remains of numerous 
small annuals attest to occasional rains wdiich, though rare, result in a luxuriant 
but brief-lived additional vegetation. These leave a crop of seeds to be garnered 
in the rest of the year by the remarkably numerous kangaroo rats, as well as by 
various birds, and granivorous insects such as ants. 
From all accounts the summer temperature of this region must be well nigh 
unbearable. We were told that the town of Palm Springs is deserted during the 
summer months by everyone but Indians. But the winter climate is truly delight- 
ful — the days and nights perfectly clear, a little warm for comfortable tramping in 
the middle of the day, but cool and pleasant the rest of the time. The excessive 
dryness of the atmosphere is a bit disagreeable, resulting in chapped hands, and 
thus increasing the danger of arsenic-poisoning if one happens to be preparing 
specimens continuously. 
Mr. Joseph Maillard and myself w'ere recently fortunate enough to participate 
