Page:Condor8(3).djvu/10

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68 THE CONDOR I VOL. VIII above the ground. The birds entered these boxes thru small holes in the bottom which seemed hardly large enough to admit the body of the bird, and an amusing thing to m,e was to see the little fellows with great bunches of nesting material in their beaks working like troopers and never stopping at the entrance hole but fair- ly diving up thru it; if it's possible to dive up. I inquired of some of the linemen as to whether or not the English sparrow had been seen in Tucson in previous years and could learn of only one pair which had nested in one of these same boxes the previous year. I am quite sure this is the first record for Tucson, for in eight seasons' collecting in Arizona I stopped at Tucson each year and would hardly overlook a bird so conspicuous. The same season (?9o4)I saw a single pair of the sparrows at Tombstone, Arizona, and Mr. F. C. Willard also saw a pair of the birds at Tombstone, being the first record for that town. I do not know of any other records for Arizona tho the birds may be common in some of the northern towns. One would naturally think from the notes gathered that the English sparrows are gradually closing in on southern California and that before many moons we can expect to see them in the streets of Los Angeles. ' Should this come to pass there will be a good chance for the Cooper Club to do some missionary work by taking steps to keep this pest from multiplying. The house finch, or linnet, seems to take the place of the English sparrow in this locality and is also considered a pest, but holds no comparison in that regard, tothe English sparrow. I fear the house finches would not last long if the sparrows once got a good start. Los ?In?eles, California. The Calaveras Warbler in Western Washington BY C. x.V. AND J. H. BOWLES HE Calaveras warbler ([[elminthophila rubricafiilla ?utturalis), altho a rare summer resident, is of rather more general distribution than even a seasoned observer would at first be led to think. Their extreme shyness makes it almost impossible to ge?t more than an occasional glimpse of the birds as they dodge int. o cover, and only the singing of the males gives the bird student any definite idea of their whereabouts. They make their first appearance in the vicinity of Tacoma early in the third week of April, and by the third week of May all the migrants have passed northward and only those intending to raise their young are to be found. The males, during the first sunny days after their arrival, seem almost too full of the joy of living to contain themselves. At this season only they are not par- ticularly shy, and they have a very pleasing habit at times while singing, that I have seen in no other warbler, namely, that of hovering thru the air for a dis- tance of fifteen or twenty yards. The manner of flying at these times is very slow and closely resembles that of one of the marsh wrens, but the beak is turned up- wards and the feathers on the swelling throat separate until it seems almost cer- tain that the bird will sing himself into some serious bodily mishap. Like the hermit warbler, a bird of the higher altitudes in the mountains of California, the Calaveras warbler, on reaching the cooler climate of the northwest,