Transcribing the field notes of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

Collector: Grinnell - 1925 Location: Lassen Section (Brokeoff Mt.) Date: June 17, 1925 Page Number: 2472

one in the distance); Hammond Flycatcher (one right now saying "see-Tuck" faintly in red fir over my head); Junco (I hear one now and then trilling in the distance); Nutcracker (I heard the nasal call and proceeded to give my usual "bluejay" call, when 5 came up, calling, one after another into the treetops close about, to see the cause; soon satisfied, they quietly departed); Chipping Sparrow (one keeps singing a little way off away young firs and hemlocks the only snow all about!); Audubon Warbler (one singing in the distance). 1:30 p.m. - In same vicinity; just heard a regulation "chorus" of two Hylas, seemingly from under the snow where the water is running noisily. A tributary comes from a snow-water pond hemmed in by rock, and with a snow bank on one side extending to the bottom, 3 feet or so, thru which the snow looks blue like ice. 1:50 p.m. - An unmistakable Red-Tailed Hawk circling above the tops of the red firs! Must be poor hunting right here. I have seen no signs of rabbits or conies; only 2 or 3 Amoenus Chipmunk, 2 chickadees, and a little sign of Thomomys monticola. No deer tracks above the first drifts of snow, but lots of them down thru the chaparral; saw track of a fawn with its mother in the trail. Saw last night's tracks of Marten and Red Fox in the snow, the former in 4's like a very large weasel's. 2:15 p.m. - Just found a Creeper's nest, about 9

Collector: Grinnell - 1925 Location: Mineral, 4800 ft. Date: June 29 Page Number: 2510

6273 Traill Flycatcher [female symbol] ad. 13.0 g. with set 3/4 (see p. 2508). 6274 Traill] [Flycatcher] [female symbol] ad. 12.7 g. [with] [set] 3/4 (see p. 2509).

First up - mountain Western House Wren in snow brush by camp at 4 p.m.

June 30 Have come with family up Viola trail towards Brokeoff Mountain, and now (12:30) we are lunching at first snow - only meagre remains of drifts - at rock slide, about 7500 feet, where I found conies on the 17th. Now, I hear them in two directions, close by, but have failed to see one. The day is perfectly clear, and the sun beats down perfervidly. The trees about me are: red fir, predominating; hemlock, a few; mountain pine (P. monticola), more. The "chaparral" is: scattered flat mats of arctostaphylos nevadensis and scrawny chinquapin; most of the ground is perfectly bare of living vegetation. What sounded like a veritable troup of Crossbills flew overhead a while ago - at least there was a chorus of sharp "chup-chup's"; I caught sight of just two birds thru the trees, in undulating, linnet-like flight. Other birds seen ^^{or heard here} the past hour (now 1 o'clock) have been: Hammond Flycatcher, Ruby-crown Kinglet, Solitaire, Audubon Warbler, Western Tanager, Calliope Hummer,^ ^{Mountain Chickadee, Rock Wren,} Clark Nutcracker. I consider this extreme upper Canadian zone.

At about 6500-foot level, saw two Callospermophilus chrysodeirus, the only two ground squirrels of this species

Collector: Grinnell - 1925 Location: Mineral, 4800 ft. Date: July 2 Page Number: 2516

we came. The four young are saved in formalin: 6282 Hammond Flycatcher, 4 small young under this number.

Other birds seen on the big meadow this forenoon were: Vaux Swift (3 flew close over the tree-tops); Tree Swallow (twittering young in company of adults were flying about over the open part of the meadow); Western Bluebird (a family on fence and in meadow).

July 3 5 p.m. - With the family on Turner Mountain, the highest elevation immediately south of Battle Creek Meadows - altitude "6300 feet", according to Mr. J.M. Stark, in winter a school-teacher in Corning, for the three summer months Forest Service Lookout on this Mountain. From here, we get a grand view (after a thunderstorm - 43 lightning strikes counted by Mr. Stark - earlier this afternoon) of Brokeoff Mt. and Mt. Lassen, and the vast surrounding timbered mountain mass. On the north side of this mountain is a perfect glacial cirque (a residual snow bank under its rim now) with a series of hummocky moraines, and two lakes impounded. A few scrub red firs and two or three alpine hemlocks and mountain pines straggle around the uppermost rim; below, around the lakes, are close stands of hemlock and lodgepole pines, the timber elsewhere above about the 5500 contour being red-fir. But the greater portion of the area in the vicinity of the top, is covered densely with chaparral. Right here on top this chaparral is wind-beaten but dense, and

Collector: Grinnell - 1925 Location: Turner Mt., 6300 ft. Date: July 3 Page Number: 2517

consist of: Ceanothus velutinus, C. cordulatus, chinquapin, service-berry, red cherry, Sierra maple, Arctostaphylos nevadensis, A. patula, red alder, and various herbs.

Written later, from pencil notes. - Birds noted right around the top, within 100 yards of the lookout house, were: Fox Sparrow (one sang repeatedly from the dead tip of a fir, lightning-blasted); Green-tailed Towhee (one sang from the lower stubby limbs of the same fir, interests centering in the brush close to the house); Cassin Purple Finch (at least three in full song up near tops of live small red firs, one came to cleared ground within 20 feet of house); Blue-fronted Jay (heard down in the hemlocks and firs below rim of cirque); Junco (a dozen or more, flying, singing or foraging along the rim and especially around the melting snow banks); Violet-green Swallow (fully a dozen in flight under the cloudy sky within the cirque, often swooping low over the snowbanks, much twittering and, I think, young among them.

Mammals around the lookout were: Callospermophilus (two, very tame, Mr. Stark complaining that they got inside his room whenever they could, only to tear about distractedly as soon a they found themselves enclosed), Chipmunks, Eut. amoenus (3 or 4 among the rocks and in the chaparral about the house); deer (tracks and tails abundant everywhere, one 4-point buck seen below the cirque on the moraines going thru [sic] the heavy

Collector: Grinnell - 1925 Location: Mineral, 4800 ft. Date: July 26 Page Number: 2530

of the nest she has under observation - Robin ^^{(2 eggs)}, Wright Flycatcher ^^{(3 eggs)}, Green-tailed Towhee (3 small young). She is keeping full, formal notes on all these, so I won't repeat. The most astonishing thing is the second set of eggs of Wright Flycatcher in the same nest a brood of 4 was raised in, this season. As far as I can see, the nest is in excellent condition, clean and compact; of course is might have - probably was - re lined and otherwise renovated at the beginning of the second mating.

Jumped a fawn here by camp, from a lying-down place under a very small fir surrounded by dense ceanothus cordulatus save for a poorly marked entrance gangway. The deer somehow got thru [sic] the mass of entanglements opposite me as I came in along the "gangway"; I noted mentally that it was a "jack rabbit" until it bounded into the open beyond, behaving, in movements, just like an old deer, tho it certainly wasn't more than 1/4 grown.

July 27

6293 Calaveras Warbler [male symbol] im. 8.1g. Shot out of hemlock, 25 feet up, where looked much larger than it proved to be.

6294 Sierra Crossbill [male symbol] ad. 29.6g. Shot out of top of hemlock about 25 feet above steeply sloping mountain-side. Testes [testes illustration]. With at least 5 others scattered about in tops of closely adjacent hemlocks, these latter abundantly producing the green pendant cones. I was mentally sure the crossbills were feeding on these cones; if even when skinning the bird shot, and I