208 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XVI 
swung about my head in ceaseless flight, and with frightened twitterings. 
The nest was composed of dried grasses, several needles from the big-cone 
spruce, some dried leaves, and a few feathers of a dusky white, that were evi- 
dently from the birds themselves. The dry grass was the dominating material 
and was woven, or rather laid, the long way of the crack. The inside of the 
nest was about two and a half inches in diameter, not over one and a half in 
depth, and was a little longer one way than the other. The whole affair was 
rather loosely built and there was no finish at the upper edge of the nest proper 
except a few coiled grasses. 
After I had replaced the slab of wood as carefully as possible I continued 
up the snag to the next crack, which was some five feet higher, and showed 
on inspection seven full-fledged young of the Western House Wren {Troglo- 
dytes aedon parkniani) . The little mother of this brood continued to fly back 
and forth to the nest with food all of the time I was on the snag, usually with 
some small moth or butterfly in her bill, sometimes several. The next thing to 
engage my attention was a small hole just around the tree from the wren’s 
nest. After several ineffectual attempts to reach it, I was about to give it up 
in spite of the fact that the surface below the entrance was polished clean from 
recent use, when my ear caught a subdued hissing. At first I thought it was 
the young wrens, but on placing my ear against the stub and tapping lightly I 
found it to proceed from the hole in front of me ; now, my bump of curiosity 
bulging, I was determined to see what was inside that hole, risk neck or not. 
So off comes my belt, and looping it over a branch a few inches long just above 
me, I placed my arm through it, and using my stockinged feet as levers, slowly 
swung myself out, till by extreme rubber-necking and the use of my one free 
arm, my mirror disclosed a tangle of what looked at first sight like a lot of 
animated mushrooms. Later observations disclosed their identity when a 
female Cabanis Woodpecker {Dryohates villosus hyloscopus) flew to the nest 
cavity with food for her young. 
The next hole to stand inspection after I had taken a much needed rest, 
was on the south side of snag, eight or nine feet higher up, and contained one 
egg of the Mountain Chickadee {Pentliestes gambeli haileyae). Just around the 
tree again and about four feet higher up, a pair of Western Bluebirds {Sialia 
mexicana occidentalis) had a cozy nest in a large cavity which sheltered two 
handsome blue eggs, looking as if two stray bits of the summer sky had become 
entangled in the grasses of the nest. Continuing up the snag I examined a 
number of holes and cracks, some containing old nests, others empty, until, 
within three feet of the jagged top, a female Western Martin {Progne suhis 
hesperia) flew out of a hole on the north side. She scolded me to such purpose, 
that, instead of using my axe to pry into her house-keeping secrets, I threw it 
to the ground below, and followed after it, as best I might, finding, by the way, 
that it is far easier to ascend a snag than it is to descend it. 
This completed my tally for this apartment house, and showed six pairs of 
insect-eating birds. Only one of these made extended trips beyond the circle 
of investing trees. These formed an open wall about a little mountain meadow 
or park-like space, covered with flowers, and therefore forming a pre-emi- 
nently suitable place for the capture of winged insects. The Cabanis Wood- 
peckers invariably flew towards the deep canyons on the north slopes of the 
flats, where no doubt they found pickings more to their liking in the shape of 
fat grubs among the fallen logs and stumps. As near as I could judge without 
a watch they made trips at intervals of about four minutes, the male carrying 
