4 
THK CONDOR 
I Vol. Ill 
riathead Lake Findings 
BY P. M. SIBPOWAY, LEWISTON, MONT. 
[Read lielore the Northern Division of the Cooper Orn. Club, Jan. 12, igoi] 
H OW frequently it happens that 
after we have given up active 
quest for a certain desideratum, 
we chance upon it some fine day w’ith 
startling abruptness! Thus it occurred 
that the indefinable element we or- 
nithologists call Luck predominated 
largely in the taking of my first (and 
only) set of Deudroica aiiduboni 
(Towns.)., vulgarly known among A. 
O. U. a.s.sociates as Audubon’s Warbler. 
Upon my arrival at our camp at the 
northeastern corner of h'lathead Lake, 
on June 14, the tops of the lofty pines 
and tamaracks were animate with the 
movements of this handsome warbler; 
and in watching the flitting visitants to a 
certain tree, I located a nest near the ex- 
tremity of a horizontal branch, to which 
the parents were making trips so regu- 
larl}" that nothing but young birds in 
the nest could explain the cause of 
their activitjx With a heav}' heart I 
concluded that I had arrived too late to 
see my hopes end in fruition by taking 
several sets of eggs of this warbler, and 
that for this season at least I must be 
content with reading in The Condor 
how Mr. Howard had taken them in 
Arizona, or how Messrs. Barlow and 
Carriger had found them in the Sierras. 
Having left my irons at home, and 
having promised my wife that I should 
not make any venturesome climbs dur- 
ing my collecting trip, I paid little at- 
tention to the tops of the large pines in 
my daily outings, though now and then 
I cast covetous glances upward when 
any undue activity of the flitting birds 
or an}" unnatural accretion in the tufts 
of extended foliage arrested my sweep- 
ing examination of the surroundings. 
Thus I explored the region near our 
camp day after day, always led onward 
(and frequently upward) by a hope 
that some belated warbler might have a 
home in the top of one of the young 
firs, into which I could peep with heart 
beating joyfully in anticipation of a set 
of eggs snugly ensconced in a downy 
cot. Didn’t Davie say that the nests of 
this species are situated at various 
heights, ranging all the way from 
three to thirty feet? Surely all the 
Flathead warblers were not nesting 
in the tops of the tall pines! And surely 
all the Flathead warblers had not con- 
cluded their nidification thus early in 
the season! 
There is a most gracious promise, of 
mo.st wonderful application, and I fancy 
how often the eager collector, as he 
further pursues his yet bootless quest, 
yields to the dreary monotone of his in- 
ward mentor, “seek and ye shall find’’, 
until all previous disappointments are 
effaced in the gratifying moment that 
he looks into the nest and reads in 
letters of rosy tinge, fresh. You see 
that at last I get to the point. 
With varying fortune the days came 
and went, until the 27th of June 
dawned. I had ceased my yearning 
after the seemingly unattainable, and 
had got down to the quest of a pair of 
Porzaiia Carolina (Linn.)., “(), what a 
fall was there, my countrymen!” Hear- 
ing the chick-like chirping of a pair of 
passing Coccothraustes vesper tinus mo 7 ii- 
anus (Ridgw.) — Fellows will undenstand 
this to mean the Western Evening 
Grosbeak — and seeing tliem hurrying 
rapidly overhead as if a nest might be 
the objective j^oint, I dropped further 
operations against the Soras, and struck 
a line through the dense growth of 
.slender willows fringing the lake, in 
hopes of chancing upon a nest of 
Coccothraustes. From sheer force of 
habit I scanned the willow canopy, 
and had .scarcely entered the growth, 
when a suspicious-looking grayish mass 
in a fork of one of the stems caught my 
eye. Giving the trunk a half-hearted 
