212 Vol. XXI FROM FIELD AND STUDY Fly-catching Birda.--?hile there is but little in my note books relating to fly- catching activities of birds other than the true flycatchers, the paragraph on this subject by Tracy I. Storer, in the "Field and Study" .columns of a late CONDOR (vol. XXI, no. 3, May-June, 1915, p. 125), induces me to offer some examples which .interested me greatly at the time of their occurrence. One of these happened while I was sojourning, in the role of a convalescent, at Arrowhead Hot Springs, San Bernardino County, California, in May, 1916. On several mornings, as I was sitting in the large lounging hall, of the hotel there and trying to l?aSs away the idle hours by gazing at the landscape, my attention was attracted by the peculiar actions of a San Diego Song Sparrow (Melosl?iza melo?ia cool?ert) which would frequently fly up from a near-by hedge and apparently endeavor to enter a room at the end of the veran.da'by means of a closed window, in spite of the glass. This became such a regular occurrence that one warm morning I moved outside with my field glass to watch the game, thinking that it must be a very stupfd bird not to have learned by repeated failures that the glass was beyond its powers of penetration. Much to my surprise the bird proved to be feasting upon house flies that nightly congregated upon the window pane, made warmer than the surroundihg walls by the artificial heat of the room, and which were rendered sluggish by the chill of the early morning temper- ature. The bird would fly up from the railing of the veran da, pick a fly or two off the glass, and return to its look-out perch to locate more, disappearing now and then proba- bly to a not far distant nest as carrying capacity' became strained, bot returning for fur- ther supplies until the increasing warmth of the morning revivified the flies sufficiently sO that they could go about their regular business of the day. Another especially interesting case took place toward tl/e end of June (1919) in the Bohemian Grove, near Monte Rio, Sonoma County, California. One day, as I was sit- ting at my typewriter in my camp, the sound of humming wings made me look up, as suoh a sound is not often heard inside the grove, and a female Allen Hummingbird (?elasl?horus allertl) was seen but a few yards away, hovering about ten feet above the ground. Dancing in a broad beam of sunlight glancing through the trees just beyond her was a rather scattering swarm of medium sized flies of some sort, a little smaller than a house fly.- Suddenly the hummingbird shot into their midst and picked out eigi?t flies in rapid succession, poising in the center of the swarm and making a short-dart at each victim. These flies seemed to be rather large sized prey for so small billed a bird and eight of them apparently sufficed, for the bird flew away and did not return. The Nuttall Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucol?hrys ?uttalli) sometimes indulges in the pastime of catching some sort of insects in such a manner as possibly to come under the head of fly-catching. I have seen this bird take insects by Jumping into the air after them, with a sort of fluttering wing motion to assist them, although never quite flying after the victims. Most, if not all, of the other varieties that I have noted indulging in this exciting pastime have been enumerated in Storer's list.--JoSEPH M?ILLI?a?, gan Francisco, July 14, 1919. ? A California Specimen of the Sandhill Crane.--The Sandhill Crane (?r? mexi- can;) is of sufficiently rare occurrence in California at the Present time to make it seem worth while to place on record the capture of a specimen from any part of the state. The close resemblance between the Sandhill and the Littie Brown cranes renders it dif- ficult to Judge from sight records alone as to the relative numbers of the two species, but there is good reason to believe that while the Little Brown is still fairly numerous as a 'winter visitant to some sections of California, the Sandhill occurs in very small numbers ?t any season. Thus, for example, the extensive collecting of water birds carried on by R. H. Beck, for the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in the vicinity of Los Barios, Merced County, during the winter of 1911-12, produced several specimens of the Little Brown Crane, but none of the Sandhill. Mr. Beck had opportunities of examining the bags of market huntcrs of the vicinity, from whom he obtained specimens pf many species of water birds, so that his failure to procure examples of the Sandhill Crane mean? the ab-
