Transcribing the field notes of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

Collector: Grinnell - 1925 Location: Lassen Section (Mineral) Date: June 17, 1925 Page Number: 2471

then by the man on foot following the telephone wire, as we have done. We are now leveling at about 8000 ft., close to the south base of Brokeoff proper. We are in plain view of the lookout house on the summit, not yet occupied this year. The snow is abundant all about us, vastly more of it than last May at the same level. Indeed we found difficulty in finding a bare place, or a ridge, where we could be dry and avoid the intense glare of the sunlight from the snow. We are in high Canadian zone, getting into Hudsonian. The trees close about are red fir (predominantly), mountain pine, and alpine hemlock. The trunks and larger branches of the bigger trees are heavily festooned with a brilliantly yellow-green lichen, betokening much misty weather here. The forest floor appears to be bare save for low mats of arctostaphylos nevadensis on ridges and sunny places. The snow is melted away from the bases of the trees, but lies between the trees in heaps 2 to fully 6 feet deep. There are the usual summer clouds about; the sun beats down hotly, but the air is chilly whenever the sun is covered. I kept pencil census of all birds seen and heard for the five hours, 7-12 (see accompanying sheet). Some arriving here (at 12) till now (12:45) I have noted: Solitaire (one singing extatically among tree-tops, or giving the "barn-door creak" note at spaced intervals, many in slow sequence); Canada Nuthatch (I hear

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: Lassen Section (Brokeoff Mt.) Date: June 17, 1925 Page Number: 2471

feet up behind a curled up section of thin bark on a dead lodgepole pine of about 10 inches diameter; mounds of snow all about; adjacent trees, hemlocks and red firs. Bird comes with bill-full of insects, and I can see the usual mass of twigs under the open side of the lifted park. 2:45 p.m. - At about 7500 ft. alt.; off the trail to the west, in one of the heads of Martin Creek; a ledge of rock along the western wall of the canyon has broken off to form a long talus slide, rocks up to a yard or more in diameter. Here, as I hoped, I hear conies in the typical association for them. At the fast of the Talus apron the snow is just going, but a little grass is coming up; also among the lowermost rocks some stalks of red elderberry are showing leaf; out from the Talus are mats of the prostrate arctostaphylos nevadensis; up along the ledges I can see clumps of red cherry and chinquapin; the trees about are red fir. I hear a Rock Wren singing ventriloquially from the rim-rock, which is well provided with crevices and caverns. This may prove to be the westernmost station for conies in the Lassen "section." 3:50 p.m. - Down to about 600-foot level, having come thru willowy meadows, with the grass barely above the earth, yet bands of restless cattle already run onto them, to keep them grazed and trampled down and the willows browsed up to 5 feet or so, and no chance for young shoots to start.

Collector: Grinnell - 1925 Location: Lassen Section (Brokeoff Mt.) Date: June 17, 1925 Page Number: 2474

Then down over "bald" hills and ridges to here, where the Timber begins again. This "baldness" of the mountains of middle altitude in this section of the Sierras is due to their dense and continuous clothure of chaparral. This makes them look at a distance as tho they were covered with green grass. The chaparral here (6000-6500) consists of the big shiny-leafed ceanothus velutinus, the thorny ceanothus condulatus, arctostaphylos patula (pure growths in places), the dwarfed arctostaphylos nevadensis here at its lowest limit and growing up to two feet high, and tracts of red cherry. 4:15 p.m. - At about 6700 ft.; at least there, maybe a family, of Blue-fronted Jays, which species I didn't check on the way up; as also a pair of solicitous Red-breasted Sapsuckers. This is near the bottom of a timbered ravine. A red fir is abundantly punctured from about 4 to 12 feet up, and bleeding - probably the work of this sapsucker. 4:30 p.m. - Just had a "great kick": within 50 feet in front of us there suddenly appeared a female Sierra Grouse and simultaneously she whistled again and again, a rather piercing squall, almost; then she began to intersperse these startling (terrifying?) notes with clucks - kirk, kirk, kirk, 6 to 10 in succession. When we ran up, she flew up 80 feet or so into a red fir, now clucking at quarter-minute intervals. Almost at the instant the hen

Author: Grinnell-1925 Location: Lassen Section (Brokeoff Mt.) Date: June 17, 1925 Page Number: 2475

made her startling appearance, running about on the ground, fanning her tail, and yelling and clucking, a male up the hillside high in some tree, began to "boont", and he's kept it up ever since. Later - the hen still clucks up in her tree, and the male "boonts" but offers his succor. We've looked and looked, but no chick can we find; they are all "(unknown2)" and lying low. 4:50 p.m. - Just had another encounter with a female Sierra Grouse. This time she was only about 12 feet from us, before we saw her, squatting in the middle of the trail. She was flattened out, brooding; and she kept her pose for fully a minute eyeing us intently. Then she abruptly sprung up in flight, immediately dropped to the ground farther along the trail, and pushed herself, breast to ground and wings quivering, around the corner out of sight, meanwhile giving only a low clucking. As she first sprung from the trail, she literally knocked the young from her; that is, they were scattered out over a couple of square feet; but each instantly froze, and stayed immobile. From where we stand we could count five, but later when they ran, seven showed up: even tho on bare open ground two had escaped our scrutiny. Meanwhile, the old bird circled back thru the brush to one side of the trail, and at at an apparent signal from her (she was giving various low notes) all the youngsters with one accord up and ran into the brush in her direction. I was able to secure one before all had vanished. Immediately the old bird flew to a distance and lit in a