BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1896
Copyright, 1896,
By FLORENCE A. MERRIAM.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
PREFATORY NOTE.
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 cases where the plumage of the two sexes is practically identical, and only slight mention is made of the species, the sexes have sometimes been arbitrarily distinguished in the text.
Several of the articles have appeared before, in somewhat different form, in 'The Auk,' 'The Observer,' and 'Our Animal Friends;' all the others are published here for the first time.