82 THE CONDOR VOL. iX

Their favorite haunt is a 'gulch on an open hillside, which is heavily covered with rub-oak, service-berry and pinyon, and here the>, are found in numbers, flitting thru the underbrush and keeping out of sight as much as possible, but continually uttering the coarse, grating cry characteristic of so many of this family. When undisturbed the>, will casionMly mount a high feuce post or the top- most branch of a small pinyon tree iu plain sight of the surrounding ground, but when disturb they quickly disappear and trust largely to the cover of the under- brash for protection. As the breeding sean approach they are much quieter and very retiring in their habits, and when incubation begins only a careful search will satisfy the oh- NEST AND EGGS OF TH WDHOUS JAY: FROM PHOTO TAKEN IN MESA COUNTV, COLORADO, JUNE 6, i 3 server that there is a oodhouse jay anywhere in the country, except for an - casional male bird who fli aimlessly about, in a mamer thoroly exasperating to the observer who wonders where the nt is. In the location and concealment of the nts they are evidently adepL% as in five years' observations I found but two nts, one of which was uncupil; and even after the leaves have dropped in the fall they are rarely seeu, a fact which can only be accounted for by the birds' rare art of concealment, for the nests are far too strongly built to weather away during the period between their cupancy and the falling leaves, and e birds are so abundant in all suible laliti that nts

must be more or less common.