In the matter herein recorded account has of course been taken of nearly all that has been done by other workers, but the literature of the birds of Washington is very meager, being chiefly confined to annotated lists, and the conclusions reached have necessarily been based upon our own experience, comprising some thirteen years residence in the State in the case of Mr. Bowles, and a little more in my own. Field work has been about equally divided between the East-side and the West-side and we have both been able to give practically all our time to this cause during the nesting seasons of the past four years. Parts of several seasons have been spent in the Cascade Mountains, but there remains much to learn of bird-life in the high Cascades, while the conditions existing in the Blue Mountains and in the Olympics are still largely to be inferred. Two practically complete surveys were made of island life along the West Coast, in the summers of 1906 and 1907; and we feel that our nesting sea-birds at least are fairly well understood. Altho necessarily bulky, these volumes are by no means exhaustive. No attempt has been made to tell all that is known or may be known of a given species. It has been our constant endeavor, however, to present something like a true proportion of interest as between the birds, to exhibit a species as it appears to a Washingtonian. On this account certain prosy fellows have received extended treatment merely because they are ours and have to be reckoned with; while others, more interesting, perhaps, have not been considered at length simply because we are not responsible for them as characteristic birds of Washington. In writing, however, two classes of readers have had to be considered,—first, the Washingtonian who needs to have his interest aroused in the birds of his home State, and second, the serious ornithological student in the East. For the sake of the former we have introduced some familiar matter from other sources, including a previous work[1] of the author’s, and for this we must ask the indulgence of ornithologists. For the sake of the latter we have dilated upon certain points not elsewhere covered in the case of certain Western birds,—matters of abundance, distribution, sub-specific variety, etc., of dubious interest to our local patrons; and for this we must in turn ask their indulgence. The order of treatment observed in the following pages is substantially the reverse of that long followed by the American Ornithologists’ Union, and is justifiable principally on the ground that it follows a certain order of interest and convenience. Beginning, as it does, with the supposedly highest forms of bird-life, it brings to the fore the most familiar birds, and avoids that rude juxtaposition of the lowest form of one group with the highest of the one above it, which has been the confessed weakness of the A. O. U. arrangement.