July, 1906 | 
LAND BIRDS OF SAN ONOFRE, CALIFORNIA 
95 
had to leave the nest unexplored altho the female was sitting and we were sure 
that there was a set of eggs there. 
We again visited this nest on March 28, 1906, and we were prepared this 
time. Pinger fired his gun and the male flushed when we were about fifty yards 
below the nest. Both hawks were rather quiet and did not swoop down at 11s 
much, but wreaked vengeance on some ravens and innocent turkey vultures that 
came too near the cliff. The nest cavity was forty-two feet below the bush to 
which the rope was tied. This cavity was about as large as a wash tub and faced 
toward the south. The three eggs were covered with mud, and it was evident 
that they had been quite wet. There was absolutely no attempt at nest building, 
the eggs being deposited on the damp sand. The embryos in the three eggs had 
begun to feather out so the eggs must have been laid about the middle of 
March. The eggs have an unusually light ground color and measure 1.99x1.53, 
2.03x1.52 and 2.03x1.58. There were large numbers of valley quail and mourn- 
ing doves in that immediate vicinity and we saw bunches of quail feathers near 
the duck hawk’s nest. 
On March 25, 1906, as we were strolling up the beach we heard a Pasadena 
thrasher singing, and looking around we discovered him perched on a small bush 
that grew right at the base of the cliff. It was raining at the time and we ap- 
proached quite near the bird before he suspended his merry song and slipped off 
to disappear among some bushes close by. I was quite surprised to find this bird 
on the beach as I had considered it an inland bird and have never seen it so near 
the ocean before. 
During our stay in 1905 we became interested in a flock of valley quail that 
came to roost every night in a small elder tree that grew within thirty feet of our 
camp. Each evening I recorded the time that the quail came to roost and found 
that during a period covering eight days, their time of going to roost did not 
vary more than ten minutes either way, from 6:15 o’clock. 
On rainy or cloudy days they were seven or eight minutes early and on bright 
clear afternoons they were a little late but they were so regular in their habits 
that when they came to roost I knew r it was 6:15 o’clock without looking at my 
watch. 
In May 1904 we found Texas nightlrawks abundant about the marsh in the 
early evening. They began to appear shortly after sundown and by the time 
darkness fell there were at least 300 birds diving down at each other or skimming 
swiftly over the water catching insects. Altho these birds were so abundant in 
the evening we never succeeded in flushing any during the daytime so I supposed 
that they must have come from some distance to this feeding ground. 
The abundance of insect life about the marsh furnished the food supply for a 
large number of swallows. In March of both 1905 and 1906 we identified the barn, 
rough-winged, violet-green, cliff and white-bellied tree swallows, as well as the 
western martin. The rough-winged and barn swallows were not numerous and 
were evidently just transients on their way north during the spring migration. 
The other species were very numerous. The cliff swallows were building on the 
section bouse on March 30, 1906. A set of four fresh eggs of the white-bellied 
tree swallow was found in a woodpecker’s hole in an elder bush on May 30, 1904. 
A set of four fresh eggs of the western martin was found in a natural cavity of 
a sycamore on May 30, 1904. The nest was made of fine grass and a few bits of 
dry sycamore leaves. Another nest was found on March 27, 1905, that was near- 
ing completion. This nest was about twelve feet up in a hole in a sycamore. This 
year, the last of March, we found six pairs of martins that were selecting nesting 
