When I touched the nest the five young ones started up their clatter, and renewed it from time to time for nearly an hour. When the parents came back one went into the nest but flew away almost immediately and was soon followed by its mate. The nest was nine inches long by seven high, its opening two inches across; it was lined with soaked sticks. The young were dark-skinned and partially feathered.
Proceeding up the stream some 200 yards I saw another Ouzel with a large worm in her beak. She was very tame and allowed me to approach within ten feet. Then I sat down on a, log while she stood on a rock in mid-stream, courtesying from side to side and twitching her tail. Soon she flew past me down stream to her nest on a moss-covered clay bank, about eight feet above the running water. It was not so well built as the others and more bulky. The young were nearly feathered, as one little fellow showed by crawling into the opening to look out. Almost half a mile down stream from this one, past the cliff nest where the parents were industriously feeding their babies, we found another net. At this point in the canon the stream ran over bedrock for several hundred feet, at an angle of about thirty degrees. The water ran very swiftly in a natural sluice, worn out of the solid slate. This sluice was about five feet wide, close to a deep cliff, and on a shelf of this cliff, several feet above the foam of the stream, was an Ouzel's nest. Needless to say I did not disturb it as it contained birds.
At the foot of the incline just mentioned, the water struck a great rock, rebounded into the air and fell twenty or thirty feet into a large, deep pool. On either side of this pool the cliffs rose hundreds of feet, sheer on one side and overhanging on the other, stopping all passage down stream. On the farther side of the pool was a shallow cave above which another pair of Ouzels had built their nest on a projection of rock. The young must have been pretty well grown and kept up a great clatter. On returning to Pescadero Canon a boy showed me another nest of this interesting bird. This one was built in the roots of an upturned tree which the stream had undermined. The water flowed directly under and about three feet below the nest, which contained four fresh eggs. On July 20, 1898, I was again in Pescadero Canon and located still another nest in the roots of an old tree which had floated down stream and lodged under a great rock. There were young in the nest and at that late date they must have been nearly matured. Thus out of nine nests found May 22, 23 and 24, one had fresh eggs, one incubated eggs, one was incomplete and the others held young of varying ages.
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Early Hummingbirds' Nesting.
With accustomed regularity the hummingbirds are found nesting in California soon after the dawn of the New Year. The severity or mildness of the winters affect them not at all and a walk in January will usually disclose one or more of the tiny creatures buzzing about the cypress trees where the early nests are more often placed. Mr. Walter E. Bryant records the first nest and eggs of C. anna for 1899, at Santa Rosa, Cal. January 28. On February 12 I collected a nest of two eggs near Mt. View, Santa Clara, Cal., in which incubation was well begun. The nest was in a cypress tree, built on a twig rather close to the trunk.C. Barlow, Santa Clara, Cal.
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House Finches Again.
Experience has taught me that House Finches may nest anywhere. I have found them occupying nests of orioles, towhees, grosbeaks, cliff swallows, blackbirds and portions of hawks' abodes; besides tin cans, old hats and stove pipes and now I shall add hollow limbs. One bird entering the opening of a small cavity actually squeezed her way back for two and a half feet to sit on her eggs in total darkness. Another reared her brood in the deep cavity of a Californian Woodpecker in an oak while a third selected a similar hole in a telegraph pole. The latter contained six eggs.Ernest Adams, San Jose, Cal.
