ns, are occasionally seen. The black-crowned night-heron is
less common than the great blue heron. Clarke's crow is more
properly called Clarke's nutcracker--a different genus. The
road robin or chewink is fairly common in the thickets above
the Lake. Nuttal's poor will, with its call of two syllables,
is not infrequently heard at night. The silent mountain
blue-bird, _sialia arctica_, is sometimes seen. So is the
western warbling vireo. The solitary white-rumped shrike is
occasionally met with in late summer. Owls are common but what
species other than the western horned owl I do not know. Other
rather rare birds are the beautiful lazuli bunting and the
western warbling vireo. Among the wood-peckers I have also
noted the bristle-bellied wood-pecker, or Lewis's wood-pecker,
Harris's wood-pecker, and the downy wood-pecker.

_ANIMALS_. These are even more numerous than the birds, though
except to the experienced observer many of them are seldom noticed.

While raccoons are not found on the eastern slopes of the High
Sierras, or in the near neighborhood of the Lake, they are not
uncommon on the western slopes, near the Rubicon and the headwaters of
the various forks of the American and other near-by rivers.

Watson assured me that every fall he sees tracks on the Rubicon and
in the Hell Hole region of very large mountain lions. They hide, among
other places, under and on the limbs of the wild grapevines, which
here grow to unusual size. In the fall of 1912 he saw some strange
markings, and following them was led to a cluster of wild raspberry
vines, among which was a dead deer covered over with fir boughs. In
telling me the story he said:

I can generally read most of the things I see in the woods,
but this completely puzzled me. I determined to find out all
there was to be found. Close by I discovered the fir from
which the boughs had been stripped. It was as if some one of
giant strength had reached up to a height of seven or eight
feet and completely stripped the tree of all its lower limbs.
Then I asked myself the question: "Who's camping here?" I
thought he had used these limbs to make a bed of. But there
was no water nearby, and no signs of camping, so I saw that
was a wrong lead. Then I noticed that the limbs were too big
to be torn off by a man's hands, and there were blood stains
all about. Then I found the fra