(404) on which she was sitting so gently that I could scarcely feel it. Lighter after moultiing. There is no doubt of these birds' being lighter and grayer than before the moult--at least in my mind. Going to bed. At 5:45 I looked up the thrashers to see if I could find Greenie's sleeping place. The road runs between the old oak and the berry patch and is cut into the slope so that there is a bank about 5 feet high on the north side. (Berry-patch side). Along this bank there is a screen of small, low-branched live oaks, broom, acacia and pine. The tallest about 15 feet high. One of these oaks is the "dormitory tree". Some of the others are suspect. I stood facing this bank about 6 feet from it. Brownie and Greenie came out from under the low-growing broom, sat on the edge of the bank and watched me for about five minutes, directly in front of me, very calmly. They wanted no worms. Gradually they faded back under the broom, so I went around to the other (berry-patch) side. I could not locate Greenie and think he was up in one of the thick masses of foliage before I got there. Slumber song. However, Brownie was still under the broom. I could see her tail work- ing up and down, so knew she must be singing. The distance was approx- imately 12 feet. I listened intently and soon I could hear her song gentle above the sound of the breeze (at my back) through the pines. This was what I have called the quarter-song, stating also that it might be called the slumber song appropriately. The last designation seemed to be particularly fitting on the present occasion, for at exactly 6:01, Brownie stopped singing, gathered a mouthful of pine needles and fibres, carried them up to her usual roost and messed about with them until they had all fallen to the ground. She then retired for the night. The use of the pine-needles, I think, showed that the act was not a conscious nesting effort, but merely an expression of the nesting instinct which required no discriminating selection of materi- als to satisfy it; because in all four nests built this year not one pine needle was used, although they gather in drifts all over the place if not removed. While the nests were building I saw innumerable in- stances where chosen material was selected from amongst pine-needles. Range of quarter- song. Nesting instinct again.