utes; not entirely unknown at this time of the year, but not to be expected. August 26th. A little rain during the night. B singing in rain. At 5:30 A.M. it was raining gently. Brownie was singing at that time. B fails to assemble convention? Nova sings. Bearing upon Greenie's age. B ignores me. At 9 A.M. Brownie was singing from an acacia at the road-runner cage, being answered by Nova in the old oak, whose song is so dis- tinctive that it is unnecessary to see the bird to identify her. It is still like that of no other thrasher I have heard. Again I am strengthened in the belief that Greenie was a very young bird and learned her phrases from Brownie. Brownie's present object, since he would pay no attention to me at all and other thrashers were heard singing in the distance, seemed to be to summon another con- gress. But in this he failed, if that was his object. On the other hand, however, he may have been merely announcing that his territory is occupied. This is not news to Nova and I doubt if B is contem- plating a divorce. After a half hour, B decided to come for worms and then joined Nova. Magpies object to clipping T's tail. In the meantime I had cut off Terry's three broken tail feath- ers which were dragging on the ground. A simple operation with him an as all I had to do was to hold out arm in a convenient place for me to snip and "go to it". Terry did not object, but the magpies, made it their business to screech raucously as each feather fell from the shears--true to form. For a short time after that if I merely showed them the shears and snipped them I was greeted with a chorus of yells at each performance. Magpies object to shears. Heavy rain. 10:45. Heavy fall of rain for the last 15 minutes. I will see how A and T like an umbrella. Rains and umbrellas are phenom- ena beyond their present experience. A and T and Umbrella. 11:15. I remained outside the cage with the umbrella. Neither