Nov., 1901. I 
THK CONDOR 
179 
most partial to the edge of clearings, where it carefully works over the deer-brush 
in search of food. Occasionally it is found in the higher conifers, and is perhaps 
the most, active of the warblers. The black-throated gray warbler nests commonly 
about Fyffe, where the following nesting records were secured. A wide range of 
ne.sting sites is shown, the birds building from low. bushes well up into the pines. 
June 15, 1897 a nest was noted seven feet up in the center of a manzanita bush 
containing four badly incubated eggs. In 1899 Mr. Carriger located a number of 
nests, the first being 12 feet up on a drooping limb of a pine. This was collected 
witli its four fresh eggs, the circumstance being shown in the accompanying half- 
tone. The location was an ideal one, being a small clearing in the forest, witli 
towering timber all about. June 7 Mr. Carriger found another nest, which the 
young were just leaving; on the same day a nest four feet up on a horizontal 
Ceanotluis limb, containing three fresh eggs: another five feet up in the deer- 
brush with four fresh eggs. On June 9 Mr. Carriger followed a female warbler 
to her ne.st, which was placed on a horizontal pine limb, 52 feet above the ground 
and contained four eggs. The nests of this species resemble those of the yellow 
warbler more closely than the ne.sts of any other species, being composed out- 
wardly of gray plant material, with a lining of fibers and feathers. C)n June 6, 
1900 Mr. Atkinson found a ne.st and four fresh eggs built in a small cedar sapling 
four feet up, while I found a nest with large young at Fyffe on June 6. 1901, 
built similarly in a cedar six feet from the ground. 
Dsndroica townsendi. Townsend Warbler. 
[A male was shot near Gilmore Lake, on the slope of Mt. Tallae, at 8500 feet 
early in August 1900, b}’ Mr. Charles Merrill. The specimen was skinned bv 
myself and is in my collection, but at present not available for the exact date. 
W. W. P.j 
Dendroica occidentalis. Hermit Warbler. This species has served to give 
Fyffe some little prominence, inasmuch as it has been studied with interest by 
numerous ornithologists who have made h'yffe their headquarters. I have found 
it nowhere so common as at F3'tfe in summer, although scattering birds have been 
observed as far up as the summit. The hermit warbler is pre-eminentl}' a fre- 
quenter of the conifers, although it feeds in the bushes and black oaks in common 
with other species. Its .song is different from that of aii}^ other vSierra warbler 
and seems well represented by the words zcegle zeegle zecgle zeck\ which I borrow 
from a letter written me bv Mr. C. W. Bowles of Waldo, Oregon. Personally I 
have been unable to hit upon a combination of letters which represents the song 
nearly so well. At close range the song of the hermit warbler appears weak 
rather than otherwise, yet at Fyffe I was impressed with its penetration. In front 
of the station a corral of several acres reaches back to the border of the forest, and 
yet the song of this warbler could be heard with great distinctness as we sat on 
the poreh. The bird will often mount to the higher branches of the conifers bj^ 
successive hops, much after the manner of the blue-fronted ja30 Up to the pres- 
ent time the eggs of the western warbler have remained rare in collections, and 
the few known sets have been taken within a small radius of F3'ffe. Some years 
ago Mr. Chas. A. Allen found several nests of this warbler at Blue Can3’on, but 
thi'ough various mishaps failed to secure a set of eggs. Major Bendire collected 
a set of warbler’s eggs on the l)es Chutes River in Idaho which he thought be- 
longed to this species, but the parent bird was lost after being shot and I believe 
the identity was never cleared up. On June 10, 1896 Mr. R. H. Beck collected a 
nest and four eggs from a limb of a 3"ellow pine 40 feet up, near the American 
River at 3,500 feet altitude. The nest was reached 1)3’ means of a ladder carried a 
