i6 
THE CONDOR 
Voi,. VII 
from the thickness of the brush, and finally I interpreted it as the ruse of the male 
to decoy me from the nest and so began to hunt in the other direction. If it could 
be shown that the male bird never clucks then some further light might possibly 
be shed on the question of the origin of this nestful of eggs. I am uninformed on 
this point. The sixth nest was found July 2 many miles from Blood’s on the slope 
of Mt. Tallac, close to where the trail sends off a branch to Susie Rake, the eleva- 
tion being about 8000 feet. The nest was under a dwarf laurel bush, was six and 
a half inches in diameter by two and a half inches deep, composed of a few twigs, 
pine needles and laurel leaves, and contained nine eggs. The bird was not to be 
seen at this time but was sitting on her eggs the next day at noon, when I watched 
her for some time. A tenth egg had been added. From the foregoing it certainly 
appears, as Mr. Belding says, that the plumed quail does not desert her nest for 
slight cause. All of the occupied nests were visited and examined more than once 
and two of them at frequent intervals for a week without disturbing the owners’ 
intentions in the least. 
The dainty little Wright flycatcher ( Empidonax wrighti) was observed only 
once when a nest, containing four fresh eggs on which the parent was sitting, was 
discovered in Bear Valley on June 20. This was placed in the forks of a small 
dead branch of a living ceanothus two feet above the ground. It measured three 
inches in diameter outwardly and the same in depth. The outer material was soft 
gray bark strips and the inner part was composed of fine brown bark fibers, hair, 
wool, and seven small gray feathers. The eggs were immaculate and pure white 
with but little gloss. A second nest of practically the same description and situ- 
ated in the same manner, except that the branch was alive throughout, was found 
on this same day and probably belonged to the same species. The nest was fin- 
ished but no eggs had yet been laid and the birds were not to be seen. 
The white-crowned sparrow (. Zonotrichia l. leucophrys ) was common in and 
about Bear Valley, but, on account of the bird’s shyness and because of my lack of 
acquaintance at first with its song, I did not realize this until several days had 
been spent there. On June 13 a nest was discovered by accident and with consid- 
erable difficulty the proper identification made, the bird flushing before one was 
near the nest and darting away through weeds and brush in a very perplexing 
wav. This nest was placed in a slight hollow on the ground in a patch of broad- 
leaved plants called locally “wild corn” ( Ver atrium calif ornicum). These plants 
were very characteristic of the damper places about the edges of the valley and 
were much frequented by the white-crowned sparrows and the pileolated warblers. 
They had attained a height of about eighteen inches at this time and so made ex- 
cellent retreats. Two other nests were found on June 15 and 17 situated in quite 
the same way, except that they were rather more on top of the ground than sunken 
into it. The one was in a patch of unidentified coarse-leaved herbage and the 
other in a thick mass of veratrium. One description will answer for all three nests. 
They were quite bulky, from six to eight inches in diameter outwardly and in- 
wardly two and a half inches across and the same in depth. The materials used 
were weed-stems for the foundations and fine dry grasses with a few horse hairs 
for lining Each nest contained four fresh eggs. The birds were shy in all cases 
and the nests could be located only by close search in such places as the experience 
in the first case had shown to be likely. 
It may be worth while to record a nest of Lincoln sparrow ( Melospiza lijicolni') 
as neither Mr. Barlow nor Mr. Belding make a definite record for the central 
Sierras. A nest with three half-fledged young was found in a small and very wet 
meadow near Susie Lake, just off the Mt. Tallac trail, on July 2. It was placed in 
