THE CONDOR VoL. VII froin 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 Lake, the eleva- tion being about 8ooo feet. Tl, e 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 (t?mpidonax wri?hti) was observed only once when a nest, containing four fresh eggs on which the parent was sitting, was discovered in Bear Valley on June 2o. This was placed in the forks of a small dead branch of a liviug 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 t3 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 way. This nest was placed in a slight hollow on the ground in a patch of broad- leaved plants called locally "wild corn" ( I/eratrium californicum). 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 ?vere found on June t5 and ?7 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 (Pielospiza lincolni) 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 Mr. Tallac trail, on July 2. It was placed in
