The Condor/Volume 1/Number 2/Nesting of Hyocichla aonalaschkæ auduboni in the Sierra Mountains

Nesting of Hylocichla aonalaschke auduboni in the Sierra Nevadas.

BY LYMAN BELDING, STOCKTON CAL.
[Read before the Northern Division of the Cooper Orn. Club, Mar. 4, 1899.]

THIS is the bird I named Turdus sequoiensis a few years ago, but as I neglected to send enough specimens to the Committee of the A. O. U. to convince them it was worthy of a new name, they finally "considered it to be identical with the Audubon's Hermit Thrush of the Rocky Mountains," and I suppose it so stands at present. By any other name it would sing just as sweetly.

It is the finest song bird of the Pacific Coast, breeding in many localities in the Sierras, on both slopes, usually choosing damp, densely-wooded localities for a summer home. It begins to sing about the middle of May at 5,000 feet altitude, below which it is seldom found in summer, and sings until about the first of September, when it leaves for warmer regions.

Altogether I have found seven nests of this bird; all of them were within a few feet of paths. They were mostly well-concealed, but one was the reverse, having been saddled on a fallen, dead, barkless fir sapling, with nothing to hide it except a few dead and leafless twigs. This nest contained four young which were quite fit to leave the nest about the middle of June. The eggs appear to be four or less. Three of the nests were in yew trees (Taxus), one was in a hazel bush (Corylus) and two were in deer brush (Ceanothus). The highest was about ten feet from the ground and the lowest about three feet. There was more or less moss (Hypnum) in all of the nests though the materials used in them varied considerably.

I hope this information will help ornithologists to find a few eggs of this very interesting bird and that they will forever afterward refrain from molesting this charming songster, to which I am indebted for many, many happy hours. Two photographs of one nest were kindly taken at my request, in 1898, but Mr. L. E. Hunt of Berkeley, Cal. The nest represented was built on a fallen cone of a sugar pine (P. lambertiana) which had lodged in a deer brush.