August 18th. There was much singing during the early morning hours. All four thrashers were seen at intervals throughout the day, Brownie singing sub-song often and long and occasional full song. One of the youngest also sang sub-song. No chasing was seen. August 18th. More full song in the morning. 4:20 P.M. Up to this time Nova and her bird have not been certainly seen. At 3:15 neighbors' children who had brought 4 lizards during the day for the road runner, came with a small gopher snake, 10 7/8 inches (28 cm.) long, which had evidently just died. I called Brownie for a worm, which he got; he then ran off with the snake, stopped at 20 feet, and for 18 minutes tried to break it up without success. He then tried to swallow it, but it "touched bot- tom" when about half way down. For 12 minutes more he tried to get it farther down, but without success. Part of this time he rested with the unswallowed part of the snake lying on top of his back. When he quit he came to me immediately for worms. I then examined the snake. The skin on the body was slightly broken in two places, but the head, which had been swallowed first was crush- ed, though I had seen B make no attack on that part. On the head were small particles which looked like the horny covering off of meal worms. Also there appeared to be other portions of the contents of B's gizzard, small in quantity. I had been wondering during the swallowing operation whether B might not be depending upon his own internal mechanism to shorten the snake on the head end so that he could "follow up" continuously with his swallowing operation and eventually get it all down. I am inclined to think, by the appearance of the head, that B worked on some such "theory". This is one of Brownie's few fail- ures.