July, 1910 
NESTING OF SPOTTED OWL IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY 
12.3 
and peek! under. “Gee Whiz!”— I nearly fell off the pole. There were three 
eggs. Then I put the female in one of the sacks, handed her down to my brother, 
and slid down with the eggs. 
We next turned our attention to the male, who was still sitting where we first 
saw him. I went down the creek a little ways and got a long dry alder pole to 
which we tied a piece of fish line. We tried to snare him with this, but the line 
was too small; so I pulled one of the leather shoe laces out of my shoes and tied it 
onto the end of the pole. This was all right, but the owl got scared and flew about 
twenty feet, lighting on a small limb overhanging the creek. I crawled up a ledge 
in front of him and kept his attention while my brother went around behind and 
tried to drop the noose over his head. He got it over all right and caught him 
by one leg, but in some way the string came off the pole and the owl flew up the 
creek with my shoe string still dangling from his feet. 
We followed the owl up the creek and threw rocks at him when he lit, until he 
lit on a point of rock on the canyon wall where my brother shot him. He flew 
quite a ways before falling and when we caught him we found that only one bone 
of his wing was broken. We put him in the other sack and carried both birds to 
camp. Here we bilt cages for them out of some dry-goods boxes and carried them 
to Fillmore in our buggy. Here we left them with Mr. Phillips, the taxidermist, 
who mounted them for us. The measurements of the birds were as follows: Male, 
wings, tip to tip, 34 inches, length 18 inches; female, wings, tip to tip, 37 inches, 
length 19 inches. The three eggs measured 1.88 x 1.56, 1.82 x 1.57, 1.88 x 1.62. 
NOTES ON THE RUFOUS-CROWNED SPARROW 
By J. R. PEMBERTON 
WITH ONR PHOTO BY W. OTTO EMERSON 
T O write an article for The Condor which will pass unscathed our worthy Ed- 
itor’s blue-pencil requires some labor and a deal of incentive. An incentive, I 
presume, is either a sincere desire to impart new knowledge to our Condor 
readers, or one sprung from our vanity in the desire to proudly tell of our takes of 
rare specimens, and gain the envy of our less fortunate friends. To write under 
the latter is easier, and under cover of scientific modesty is the method adopted by 
the casual field worker. It is thus fair enough for me to add a little to our know- 
ledge of the Rufous-crowned Sparrow, and tell, entirely “on the side,” of a set of 
eggs I had the fortune to take. 
I have met the Rufous-crowned Sparrow ( Aimophila ruficefis rujiceps) in 
many places from Ventura County to Marin County in the Coast Ranges; and the 
distribution of this distinctively Californian bird is given in our literature as ex- 
tending along the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada from San Diego County to 
Colfax in Placer County, and not north of Marin County in the Coast Range. 
In the region about San Francisco Bay, conditions seem ideal for the home of 
this bird, for practically few localities are without it. Southern Alameda County, 
from Haywards thru the Eivermore Valley country, down into the Mount Hamilton 
region and back up the western slopes of the Bay is especially favored by colonies 
of these birds. 
The writer had the fortune to be for several weeks in the Arroyo Mocho, Ar- 
