18 
ORNITHOLOGIST 
[Vol. 6-No. 3 
ftil faculty for worming bis w’ay through 
the grass, and at a sharj) angle from his 
line of flight, biit wdiether to the right or 
left I could not know until he arose again. 
It w’as only after several attempts that I 
succeeded in capturing him. 
The musical performance of this bird 
has very little to commend it; though con¬ 
sidering the poor success he meets with, 
his performance is certainly praiseworthy. 
When the muse inspires his breast he 
mounts to the top of a weed or some other 
object that raises him just above the grass. 
There he sits demurely until the spirit 
moves, when he suddenly throws up his 
head and with an appearance of much ef¬ 
fort, jerks out his monosyllabic “tsiji,” ap¬ 
parently with great satisfaction. Then, 
having relieved himself he drops his head 
and waits patiently for his little cup to 
fill again. Somehow I cannot watch him 
while thus engaged, without a feeling of 
pity for a creature so constituted that he 
can be satisfied with such a perfonnance, 
and content with his surroundings. 
C. M. Jones, Eastford, Conn. 
Collecting on the Pacific Coast. 
June ‘26,1880,on my return from a collect¬ 
ing trip in the Interior, I started for “Pimta 
de los Reyos,” Point Reyos; a barren, dis¬ 
mal, rocky place, such as is seldom \dsited 
by a collector. Excepting in a few' places 
the cliffs are inaccessible, and here amid 
the din and roar of old Ocean, thousands 
of Brants, Cormorants Graculns pencilla- 
tus, and Violet Green Cormorants, Gracu- 
lus violuceus, build their nests and rear 
their young. There was also a few Tufted 
Puffins, Mormon cirrhata. Western Gmlle- 
mots, Uria columba, with a few pairs of 
Western Gulls, Lams occidentulus, and 
two pairs of Wandering Tattlers, Ileterosct- 
lus brevipes. The latter had no doubt 
nests, as they would not leave two im¬ 
mense caverns which were formed in the 
face of the cliff by the action of the water. 
While perched on a rocky point between 
th(! two caverns shooting the M. cirrhata 
as they circled about my head, the M. bre¬ 
vipes would come flying out with their 
shrill piping ciy only to return again, and 
at the next report the same scene w'ould 
be enacted. At the report of the gun the 
air would be filled wuth birds circling 
about, each giving out their peculiar cry. 
But only those nearest could be heard, 
such was the terrific din and crash made 
by the Pacific ocean against the face of 
the cliff and in the caverns, large and 
small, w'orn in the solid rock by countless 
ages of the washing of the cruel and re¬ 
lentless waves that know no rest, day or 
night. I could sit on a few favorable 
points and look into hundreds of nests, 
filled with their treasures, “so near and 
yet so far,” but the steep and perjiendicu- 
lar cliffs afforded no foothold whatever. 
One place in particular, a narrow shelf of 
rock about twenty feet above the water 
and on which were eight nests of U. colum- 
ba with the birds on the nests, not one of 
which could be obtained except by being 
lowered from the cliff above for a distance 
of 200 feet by a rope. The L. occxdentalus 
had already hatched and the downy, half- 
fledged young were easily caught, when 
the old ones came darting and circling 
around me with a continuous screaming 
cry that soimded above the roar of the 
surf and set hundreds of other birds in 
motion so tliat to watch them whirling 
aboiit one’s head produced a dizziness. I 
was soon glad to release the little things, 
as they kept biting so viciously. So I 
gave each a toss in the air and they went 
whirliTig down over the cliffs until they 
struck the water when most of them j)ad- 
dled off to sea, while the old ones dispers¬ 
ed in search of food. The cliffs range in 
Ixight from one hundred and fifty to seven 
hundred feet, and are iniu’cessible except 
in a few places where I made out to get a 
few sets of G. pencillatus. I remained 
here three chiys and secured more skins 
than eggs. Only a small percentage of 
the birds shot could be secured as they 
drifted into caverns and among the rocks 
