The notes contained in this book were taken from March to May, 1889, and from March to July, 1894, at Twin Oaks in southern California. Twin Oaks is the post-office for the scattered ranch-houses in a small valley at the foot of one of the Coast Ranges, thirty-four miles north of San Diego, and twelve miles from the Pacific. As no collecting was done, there is doubt about the identity of a few species; and their names are left blank or questioned in the list of birds referred to in the text. In

" Climb the mountain back of the house and you can see the Pacific," the ranchman told me with a gleam in his eye; and later, when I had done that, from the top of a peak at the foot of the valley he pointed out the distant blue mountains of Mexico. Then he gave me his daughter's saddle horse to use as long as I was his guest, that I might explore the valley and study its birds to the best advantage. Before coming to California, I had known only the birds of New York and Massachusetts, and so wa

On my second visit to California, I spent the winter in the Santa Clara valley, riding among the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, where flocks of Oregon robins were resting from the labors of the summer and passing the time until they could fly home again; but when the first spring wild flowers bloomed on the hills I shipped my little roan mustang by steamer from San Francisco to San Diego, and hurried south to meet him and spend the nesting season in the little valley of the Coast Mountai

When watching the little lover and his brood, I heard familiar voices farther down the line of oaks, voices of little friends I had made on my first visit to California, and had always remembered with lively interest as the jauntiest, most individual bits of humanity I had ever known in feathers. So, when Mountain Billy and I could be spared by the other bird families we were watching, we set out to hunt up the little bluish gray western gnatcatchers. The (sand) stream that widened under the wre

After the wren-tit stole in like a thief in the night and broke up the pretty home of the gnatcatchers, I suspected that they took their house down to put it up again in a safer place, and so was constantly on the lookout to find where that safer place was. At last, one day, I heard the welcome sound of their familiar voices, and following their calls finally discovered them flying back and forth to a high branch on an old oak-tree; both little birds working and talking together. Mind, I do not

I had not spent many days in The Little Lover's door-yard before realizing that there was something in the wind. If an inoffensive person fancies sitting in the shade of a sycamore with her horse grazing quietly beside her, who should say her nay? If, at her approach, a—feathered—person steals away to the top of the highest, most distant oak within sight and, silent and motionless, keeps his eye on her till she departs; if, as she innocently glances up at the trees, she discovers a second—feathe

On our way back and forth along the line of oaks and sycamores belonging to the little prisoners, the little lover, and the gnatcatchers, Mountain Billy and I got a good many hints, he of places to graze, and I of new nests to watch. While waiting for the woodpeckers one day I saw a small brownish bird flying busily back and forth to some green weeds. She was joined by her mate, a handsome blue lazuli bunting, even more beautiful than our lovely indigo bunting, and he flew beside her full of lif

Close up under the hills, the old vine-covered ranch-house stood within a circle of great spreading live oaks. The trees were full of noisy, active blackbirds—Brewer's blackbirds, relatives of the rusty that we know in New York. The ranchman told me that they always came up the valley from the vineyard to begin gathering straws for their nests on his brother's birthday, the twenty-fifth of March. After that time it was well for passers below to beware. If an unwary cat, or even a hen or turkey g

The bush-tits are cousins of the eastern chickadees, which is reason enough for liking them, although the California fruit growers have a more substantial reason in the way the birds eat the scale that injures the olive-trees. The bush-tits might be the little sisters of the chickadee family, they are so small. They look like gray balls with long tails attached, for they are plump fluffy tots, no bigger than your thumb, without their tails. One of them, when preoccupied, once came within three f

Before going home from my morning sessions with the little lover and other feathered friends, I often took a gallop at the foot of the hills to visit a gigantic old tree, the king of the valley. One such ride is especially marked in my memory. It was on one of California's most perfect mornings. When the sun had risen over the valley, the fog dissolved before it, sinking away until only small white clouds were left in the tender blue of the notches between the red hills; while the bared vault ov

The first year I was in California the thought of the orchards that were to be set out on my ranch appealed to me much less than what the place already possessed. As an inheritance from the stream that came down in spring through the Ughland canyon—past the homes of the little lover, the gnatcatchers, the little prisoners, and the lazulis and blue jays—there was a straggling line of old sycamores, full of birds' nests; and a patch of weeds, wild mustard, and willows, which was a capital shelter

Six years ago, on my first visit to California, I found a dainty cup of a nest out in the oaks, but the name of its owner was a puzzle. On returning East I consulted those who are wisest in matters of such fine china, but they were unable to clear up the matter. For five years that mystery haunted me. At the end of that time, when back in California, up in those same oaks, I found another cup of the same pattern; but the cup got broken and that was the end of it. The fact of the matter is, you c

California is the land of flowers and hummingbirds. Hummingbirds are there the winged companions of the flowers. In the valleys the airy birds hover about the filmy golden mustard and the sweet-scented primroses; on the blooming hillsides in spring the air is filled with whirring wings and piping voices, as the fairy troops pass and repass at their mad gambols. At one moment the birds are circling methodically around the whorls of the blue sage; at the next, hurtling through the air after a dist

There were half a dozen places in the valley, irrigated by the spring rains, where I was always sure of finding birds. Among them, on the west side, was the big sycamore, standing at the lower end of the valley; while above, in the northwest corner, was the mouth of Twin Oaks canyon where the migrants flocked in the brush around the large twin oak that overlooked the little old schoolhouse. On the east side was the Ughland canyon, at the mouth of which the little lover and his neighbors nested;

On a peg just inside the door of the ranchman's old wine shed hung one of the horses' unused nosebags. A lad on the place told me that a wren had a nest in it, and added that he had seen a fight between the wren and a pair of linnets who seemed to be trying to steal her material. The first time I went to the wine shed both wrens and linnets were there, but nothing happened and I forgot about the original quarrel. By peering through a crack in the boarding I could look down on the wren in the nos

They picked out their crack in the oak and began to build without any advice from me, winning little gray-crested titmice that they were. Their oak was right behind the ranch-house barn; I found it by hearing the bird sing there. The little fellow, warmed by his song, flitted up the tree a branch higher after each repetition of his loud cheery tu-whit', tu-whit', tu-whit', tu-whit' . Meanwhile his pretty mate, with bits of stick in her bill, walked down a crack in the oak trunk. Thinking she had

The little German girl with the scarlet pinafore was a near neighbor, living at the head of the valley in a cottage surrounded by great live-oaks. These trees were alive with birds. Bush-tits flew back and forth, busily hanging their gray pockets among the leafy folds of the drooping branches; blue jays flew through, squawking on their way to the brush; goldfinches, building in the orchard, lisped sweetly as they rested in the oaks; and a handsome oriole who was building in the grove flew overhe

The second time I went to California the little whitewashed adobe opposite my ranch was still standing, but an acacia-tree had grown over the well where the black phœbe had nested, and the shaft was so overrun with bushes and vines that it was hard to find a trace of it. Drawn by pleasant memories, I rode in one morning, sure of finding something interesting about the old place. I had not waited long before the chip of a young bird came from the vines over the well. It proved a callow nestling,

We may say that we care naught for the world and its ways, but most of us are more or less tricked by the high-sounding titles of the mighty. Even plain-thinking observers come under the same curse of Adam, and, like the snobs who turn scornfully from Mr. Jones to hang upon the words of Lord Higginbottom, will pass by a plain brown chippie to study with enthusiasm the ways of a phainopepla! Sometimes, however, in ornithology as in the world, a name does cover more than its letters, and we are du