Page:Condor5(3).djvu/8

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MAy. ?9o31 THE CONDOR 65 ing here (May ?7), that dozens on dozens of the birds were lying about. For the first two weeks the birds so found were mostly males, but later on the greater numbers were composed of females and young of the year, in gray and light olive green plumage. On the eend of May, in driving through the canyon, some nine mile to the other side of the range of hills between Haywards and the Livermore Valley, I found the tanagers scattered through the black oaks. They were moving east- ward, more notably in the morning. In the middle of the day they kept to the cool thick foliage. In the orchard from fifty to sixty shots a day were used, but they seemed to make no decrease in the number of tanagers that came every day to feed on the ripening cherries. Tanagers lay about everywhere, and no doubt many must have flown off to die in the bushes or on the hill sides. The neighboring cats soon found out the feast, and every night would come to have their fill of the gay col- ored birds. In counting up the two weeks' continual shooting of say three dozen birds a day, at the least, of forty to fifty shells used, we have a total of over 6o0 birds killed, and it may have run up to a thousand, as the neighboring boys came in with their guns to have a shot at them also, for fear the birds might come to their orchards next. I noticed one fact of the re- striction of the tanagers to the orchards along the hill edges. None were found, so to speak, in the larger or- chards about the town of Haywards. I found them only for a few days in my own orchard, that is to say from the 26th of May to June 4th. After shooting at them once or twice, they became very shy, flying to the tall trees along the creek as soon as any person was see n. At this time large flocks of waxwings, or cedar birds, were about the orchard trees, but I found that they did no damage to the fruit (as they are known to do in the eastern orchards). Mr. R. H. Beck notes tanagers all through the Calaveras Valley to the San Joaquin Valley up the mountains to Lake Tahoe of the Sierras. Mr. H. Keading tells me he met with them aI1 through the mountains about the vicinity of Mono, Elnora and others of the high Sierra lakes. From my records for Haywards, for the last fifteen years, I have only noted them twice: a female shot May 28, z88o, and a female seen May 2z, ?883. Mr. ?V. E. Bryant mentions them as not a common bird about the Oakland hills. Mr. H. A. Gaylord of Pasadena, Cal., in a letter under date of June ?896, states that "they were seen singly from April 23 to May ?. From this date up to May 5 their numbers were greatly increased, and by May 5 there was an unusually large number of them. Then for about ten days, until May x6, the