Page:Condor6(4).djvu/28

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July, x9o4 [ THE CONDOR are plentiful here. They have taken their winter food from the live oak of the foothills (Quercus wislizeni); now they feed largely from manzanita buds. On February xo, I heard a noise which sounded like coo, coo, coo, and after a search I found a road-runner perched up in the branches of an oak tree. I recognized it as the author of the sounds I had heard. I suppose this is one of its love songs. One of my young friends informed me that he saw a bird sitting in a nest at the eave of his house on the 23d of December, x9oL January x3 he looked in the nest and found four eggs nearly ready to hatch, Two weeks later they were hatched and gone. He informs me also that this same nest contained three broods of five birds each last summer. I think the bird is the Say phoebe (Sayornis saya). A friend of mine saved a nest of a hummingbird, probably Calypte anna, which had been built upon a small loop of rope, which was attached to one of the rafters of a shed. The nest was made of spiders' webs, and two young were hatched August 2, x9ox, but they died. My friend at the same ranch reported finding a complete set of dore's eggs (Zenai- dura macroura) February 27, I00'J.--W. F. DEAN, Three Hivers, Cal. NOTES AND NEWS We have just received a letter from Mr. Grinnell dated Mr. Pinos, June 26. He says: "Here I am, on the slopes of Mr. Pinos, a state of existence which I have longed for, for many moons. And I am not disappointed either, in the wildness of it, nor in the animals so far secured, though there is a lamentable lack of water. We have been just ten days from Pasadena, loitering in An- telope Valley and Tejon Pass en route, To-day I climbed to the topof the peak and had a fine Jew of the country all about, Tulare Lake, Sierra Nevada, Mojave Desert and the ocean. We are camped at 65oo feet." We shall leave the "animals" for Mr. Grinnell to detail later, as they are an interesting lot. Mr. Edmund Heller writes from Juchitan, Oaxaca, Mexico, under date of April 23d: "Since writing you before, our instructions have been modified and we are now collecting both mammals and birds for the department of taxidermy. For the last month we have been at work on the dry side af the isthmus, in a country resembling in fauna and flora the deserts of Califoruia and Arizona." Mr. Heller is making natural history collections for the Field-Columbian Museum. Mr. J. O. Snyder has left for an extensive fishing trip through the Klamath and Goose Lake Basins of southern Oregon. The last of May we received a notice of the Spring Outing Meeting of the Southern I)ivision, but have since heard nothing of the meeting itself. By the way, is the Secretary of the Sonthern Division on a protracted vacation ? We have uot received official minutes since March I9o3. We have heard unofficially that an Audubon Society has been organized in Pasadena, bnt have received no word from headquarters. Mr. Scott Way is secretary. Mr. Hubert O. Jenkins has left for Mr. Whitney, to be gone the rest of the summer. About the middle of the summer Mr. Malcolm P. Anderson expects to sail for China, where he will be engaged, for the next three years, in collecting mammals for the British Museum. Mr. R. B. Moran is camping in Santa Barbara county. Mr . W. W. Price is located at his summer camp, Glen Alpine, Tallac, California. Mr. P.M. Silloway is in the vicinity of Bigfork, Moutana, for the summer. The Thirteenth Supplement to the American Ornithologists' Union Check-list of North American Birds, issued with the July ,4uk contains among others the following important changes and additions. 1)endra.'apus obscurus sictree Chapman is added; Avclala Brehm becomes Cryplolau.x' Richmond; Sayornis nixricans semialta dropped; Corvus americanus becomes C. brachyrh. vnchos,. ?olecophaus Swainson, preoccupied, becomes Euphag'us Cassin; .4slraalinus psallria hesperophilus Oberholser is added (SW. U.S.); tspilojStscus catoIce is dropped; Lanius ludovicianus mearnsi Ridgway (San Clemente Id.) is added; Budyles jIavus a/ascensis Ridgway is added; tieleodyles brunneicapillus is replaced by H. b. couesi; ]Tceolophus inornalus reslrictus Ridgway (vicinity of San Francisco Bay) is added; Phyllopseusles Meyer becomes ,4canlhopneusle Blasius; Dendroica cesliva brewsleri, and Heleodyles brunneicapillus anlhonyi are rejected. Pas- serculus roslralus halophilus is eqnivalent to P. r. g'ullalus in summer plunmge. The Ptiliogo- natinte, Miminte, 8ittine and Chamteinte are raised to family rank.