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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A-Birding on a Bronco, by Florence A. Merriam
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A-Birding on a Bronco
+
+Author: Florence A. Merriam
+
+Release Date: August 11, 2010 [EBook #33410]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A-BIRDING ON A BRONCO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper, Emmy and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Books by Florence A. Merriam.
+
+
+          BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. In Riverside Library
+          for Young People. Illustrated. 16mo, 75 cents.
+
+          MY SUMMER IN A MORMON VILLAGE. 16mo, $1.00.
+
+          A-BIRDING ON A BRONCO. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.25.
+
+
+          HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
+          BOSTON AND NEW YORK.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNTAIN BILLY UNDER THE GNATCATCHER'S OAK]
+
+
+
+
+A-BIRDING ON A BRONCO
+
+BY FLORENCE A. MERRIAM
+
+
+                  I do invite you ... to my house ...
+          after, we'll a-birding together.
+                     SHAKESPEARE.
+
+_ILLUSTRATED_
+
+[Illustration: The Riverside Press.]
+
+
+          BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+          HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+          The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+          1896
+
+
+
+
+          Copyright, 1896,
+
+          By FLORENCE A. MERRIAM.
+
+
+          _All rights reserved._
+
+
+          _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A._
+
+          Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE.
+
+
+THE notes contained in this book were taken from March to May, 1889, and
+from March to July, 1894, at Twin Oaks in southern California. Twin Oaks
+is the post-office for the scattered ranch-houses in a small valley at
+the foot of one of the Coast Ranges, thirty-four miles north of San
+Diego, and twelve miles from the Pacific.
+
+As no collecting was done, there is doubt about the identity of a few
+species; and their names are left blank or questioned in the list of
+birds referred to in the text. In cases where the plumage of the two
+sexes is practically identical, and only slight mention is made of the
+species, the sexes have sometimes been arbitrarily distinguished in the
+text.
+
+Several of the articles have appeared before, in somewhat different
+form, in 'The Auk,' 'The Observer,' and 'Our Animal Friends;' all the
+others are published here for the first time.
+
+The illustrations are from drawings of birds and nests by Louis Agassiz
+Fuertes, and from photographs taken in the valley; together with some
+of eucalyptus-trees from Los Angeles, for the use of which I am indebted
+to the courtesy of Dr. B. E. Fernow, Chief of the Division of Forestry
+of the U. S. Department of Agriculture.
+
+In the preparation of the book I have been kindly assisted by Miss
+Isabel Eaton, and have received from my brother, Dr. C. Hart Merriam,
+untiring criticism and advice.
+
+                                                    FLORENCE A. MERRIAM.
+
+  LOCUST GROVE, N. Y.,
+  July 15, 1896.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                                      PAGE
+              I. OUR VALLEY                             1
+             II. THE LITTLE LOVER                      20
+            III. LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT             38
+             IV. WAS IT A SEQUEL?                      48
+              V. LITTLE PRISONERS IN THE TOWER         65
+             VI. HINTS BY THE WAY                      81
+            VII. AROUND OUR RANCH-HOUSE                86
+           VIII. POCKET MAKERS                        103
+             IX. THE BIG SYCAMORE                     112
+              X. AMONG MY TENANTS                     123
+             XI. AN UNNAMED BIRD                      140
+            XII. HUMMERS                              147
+           XIII. IN THE SHADE OF THE OAKS             159
+            XIV. A MYSTERIOUS TRAGEDY                 171
+             XV. HOW I HELPED BUILD A NEST            175
+            XVI. IN OUR NEIGHBOR'S DOOR-YARD          184
+           XVII. WHICH WAS THE MOTHER BIRD?           189
+          XVIII. A RARE BIRD                          194
+            XIX. MY BLUE GUM GROVE                    211
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+                                                               PAGE
+
+    Mountain Billy under the Gnatcatcher's Oak.    _Frontispiece_
+    Our Valley                                                  4
+    Head of Black-headed Grosbeak                               8
+    Head of Rose-breasted Grosbeak                              8
+    In Hot Pursuit (Brewer's Blackbird and Bee-birds)          13
+    The Little Lover (Western House Wren)                      20
+    A Trying Moment (Western House Wren)                       32
+    Nest of Western Gnatcatcher                                39
+    Head of California Woodpecker                              66
+    Head of Red-headed Woodpecker (Eastern)                    66
+    Jacob and Bairdi visiting the Old Nest Tree                78
+    Head of Arizona Hooded Oriole                              89
+    Head of Baltimore Oriole (Eastern)                         89
+    Head of California Chewink                                 93
+    Head of Eastern Chewink                                    93
+    Valley Quail and Road-runner                               99
+    Nest of the Bush-tit                                      104
+    Pocket Nest in an Oak                                     108
+    The Big Sycamore                                          114
+    Along the Line of Sycamores                               124
+    Head of Black Phœbe                                       129
+    Head of Eastern Phœbe                                     129
+    The Little Hummer on her Bow-knot Nest                    148
+    The Swing Nest of the Hummer                              157
+    A Shady Bower                                             160
+    Head of Green-tailed Chewink                              163
+    The Nosebag Nest (Vigors's Wren)                          173
+    The Plain Titmouse in her Doorway                         176
+    Which was the Mother Bird? (Wren-tit and Lazuli Buntings) 189
+    The Phainopeplas on the Pepper-tree                       194
+    The Phainopepla's Nest in the Oak Brush Island            198
+    Eucalyptus Avenue, showing Pollarded Trees on the Right   212
+    Eucalyptus Wood stored for Market in a Eucalyptus Grove   214
+    Mountain Billy Deserted                                   220
+
+
+
+
+BIRDS REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT.[1]
+
+  White Egret. _Ardea egretta._
+  Green Heron. _Ardea virescens anthonyi._
+  Spotted Sandpiper. _Actitis macularia._
+  Valley Quail. _Callipepla californica vallicola._
+  Mourning Dove. _Zenaidura macroura._
+  Turkey Vulture. _Cathartes aura._
+  Hawk. _Buteo ----._
+  Sparrow Hawk. _Falco sparverius deserticolus._
+  American Barn Owl. _Strix pratincola._
+  Western Horned Owl. _Bubo virginianus subarcticus._
+  Burrowing Owl. _Speotyta cunicularia hypogæa._
+  Road-runner. _Geococcyx californianus._
+  California Woodpecker. _Melanerpes formicivorus bairdi._
+  Red shafted Flicker. _Colaptes cafer._
+  Dusky Poor-will. _Phalænoptilus nuttalli californicus._
+  Black-chinned Hummingbird. _Trochilus alexandri._
+  Rufous Hummingbird. _Selasphorus rufus._
+  Arkansas Kingbird. _Tyrannus verticalis._
+  Cassin's Kingbird. _Tyrannus vociferans._
+  Black Phœbe. _Sayornis nigrescens._
+  Western Wood Pewee. _Contopus richardsonii._
+  Flycatcher. _Empidonax ----._
+  Horned Lark. _Otocoris alpestris chrysolæma._
+  California Jay. _Aphelocoma californica._
+  American Crow. _Corvus americanus._
+  Yellow-headed Blackbird. _Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus._
+  Red-winged Blackbird. _Agelaius phœnicius ----._
+  Arizona Hooded Oriole. _Icterus cucullatus nelsoni._
+  Bullock's Oriole. _Icterus bullocki._
+  Brewer's Blackbird. _Scholocophagus cyanocephalus._
+  Western House Finch. _Carpodacus mexicanus frontalis._
+  Goldfinch. _Spinus ----._
+  White-crowned Sparrow. _Zonotrichia leucophrys gambeli (?)._
+  Golden-crowned Sparrow. _Zonotrichia coronata._
+  Heerman's Song Sparrow. _Melospiza fasciata heermanni (?)._
+  Spurred Towhee or Chewink. _Pipilo maculatus megalonyx._
+  Green-tailed Towhee. _Pipilo chlorurus._
+  California Towhee. _Pipilo fuscus crissalis._
+  Black-headed Grosbeak. _Habia melanocephala._
+  Western Blue Grosbeak. _Guiraca cærulea eurhyncha._
+  Lazuli Bunting. _Passerina amœna._
+  Louisiana Tanager. _Piranga ludoviciana._
+  Cliff Swallow. _Petrochelidon lunifrons._
+  Phainopepla. _Phainopepla nitens._
+  White-rumped Shrike. _Lanius ludovicianus excubitorides._
+  Warbling Vireo. _Vireo gilvus (?)._
+  Hutton's Vireo. _Vireo huttoni (?)._
+  Least Vireo. _Vireo bellii pusillus (?)._
+  Long-tailed Chat. _Icteria virens longicauda._
+  American Pipit. _Anthus pensilvanicus._
+  California Thrasher. _Harporhynchus redivivus._
+  Vigors's Wren. _Thryothorus bewickii spilurus._
+  Western House Wren. _Troglodytes ædon aztecus._
+  Plain Titmouse. _Parus inornatus._
+  Wren-tit. _Chamæa fasciata._
+  California Bush-tit. _Psaltriparus minimus californicus._
+  Western Gnatcatcher. _Polioptila cærulea obscura._
+  Varied Thrush or Oregon Robin. _Hesperocichla nævia._
+  Western Bluebird. _Sialia mexicana occidentalis._
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] In classification and nomenclature this list conforms to the
+American Ornithologists' Union 'Check-List of North American Birds,'
+Second Edition, 1895. L. S. Foster, New York.
+
+
+
+
+A-BIRDING ON A BRONCO.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+OUR VALLEY.
+
+
+"CLIMB the mountain back of the house and you can see the Pacific," the
+ranchman told me with a gleam in his eye; and later, when I had done
+that, from the top of a peak at the foot of the valley he pointed out
+the distant blue mountains of Mexico. Then he gave me his daughter's
+saddle horse to use as long as I was his guest, that I might explore the
+valley and study its birds to the best advantage. Before coming to
+California, I had known only the birds of New York and Massachusetts,
+and so was filled with eager enthusiasm at thought of spending the
+migration and nesting season in a new bird world.
+
+I had no gun, but was armed with opera-glass and note-book, and had
+Ridgway's Manual to turn to in all my perplexities. Every morning, right
+after breakfast, my horse was brought to the door and I set out to make
+the rounds of the valley. I rode till dinner time, getting acquainted
+with the migrants as they came from the south, and calling at the more
+distant nests on the way. After dinner I would take my camp-stool and
+stroll, through the oaks at the head of the valley, for a quiet study of
+the nearer nests. Then once more my horse would be brought up for me to
+take a run before sunset; and at night I would identify my new birds and
+write up the notes of the day. What more could observer crave? The world
+was mine. I never spent a happier spring. The freedom and novelty of
+ranch life and the exhilaration of days spent in the saddle gave added
+zest to the delights of a new fauna. In my small valley circuit of a
+mile and a half, I made the acquaintance of about seventy-five birds,
+and without resort to the gun was able to name fifty-six of them.
+
+My saddle horse, a white bronco who went by the musical name of Canello,
+had been broken by a Mexican whose cruelty had tamed the wild blood in
+his veins and left him with a fear of all swarthy skins. Now he could be
+ridden bareback by the little girls, with only a rope noose around his
+nose, and was warranted to stand still before a flock of birds so long
+as there was grass to eat. He was to be relied on as a horse of ripe,
+experience and mature judgment in matters of local danger. No power of
+bit or spur could induce him to set foot upon a piece of 'boggy land,'
+and to give me confidence one of the ranchman's sons said, "Wherever
+I've killed a rattlesnake from him he'll shy for years;" and went on to
+cite localities where a sudden, violent lurch had nearly sent him over
+Canello's head! What greater recommendation could I wish?
+
+If the old horse had had any wayward impulses left, his Mexican bit
+would have subdued them. It would be impossible to use such an iron in
+the mouth of an eastern horse. They say the Mexicans sometimes break
+horses' jaws with it. From the middle of the bit, a flat bar of iron,
+three quarters of an inch wide, extended back four inches, lying on the
+horse's tongue or sticking into the roof of his mouth, according to the
+use of the curb--there was no other rein. The bit alone weighed sixteen
+ounces. The bridle, which came from Enseñada in Lower California, then
+the seat of a great gold excitement, was made of braided raw-hide. It
+was all hand work; there was not a buckle about it. The leather quirt at
+the end of the reins was the only whip necessary. When I left the ranch
+the bridle was presented to me, and it now hangs behind my study door, a
+proud trophy of my western life, and one that is looked upon with
+mingled admiration and horror by eastern horsemen.
+
+Canello and I soon became the best of friends. I found in him a valuable
+second--for, as I had anticipated, the birds were used to grazing
+horses, and were much less suspicious of an equestrian than a foot
+passenger--and he found in me a movable stake, constantly leading him
+to new grazing ground; for when there was a nest to watch I simply hung
+the bridle over the pommel and let him eat, so getting free hands for
+opera-glass and note-book. To be sure, there were slight causes of
+difference between us. He liked to watch birds in the high alfalfa under
+the sycamores, but when it came to standing still where the hot sun beat
+down through the brush and there was nothing to eat, his interest in
+ornithology flagged perceptibly. Then he sometimes carried the rôle of
+grazing horse too far, marching off to a fresh clump of grass out of
+sight of my nest at the most interesting moment; or when I was intently
+gazing through my glass at a rare bird, he would sometimes give a sudden
+kick at a horsefly, bobbing the glass out of range just as I was making
+out the character of the wing-bars.
+
+[Illustration: OUR VALLEY]
+
+From the ranch-house, encircled by live-oaks, the valley widened out,
+and was covered with orchards and vineyards, inclosed by the low
+brush-grown ridges of the Coast Mountains. It was a veritable paradise
+for the indolent field student. With so much insect-producing verdure,
+birds were everywhere at all times. There were no long hours to sit
+waiting on a camp-stool, and only here and there a treetop to 'sky' the
+wandering birds. The only difficulty was to choose your intimates.
+
+Canello and I had our regular beat, down past the blooming quince and
+apricot orchard, along the brush-covered side of the valley where the
+migrants flocked, around the circle through a great vineyard in the
+middle of the valley, past a pond where the feathered settlers gathered
+to bathe, and so back home to the oaks again.
+
+I liked to start out in the freshness of the morning, when the fog was
+breaking up into buff clouds over the mountains and drawing off in veils
+over the peaks. The brush we passed through was full of glistening
+spiders' webs, and in the open the grass was overlaid with disks of
+cobweb, flashing rainbow colors in the sun.
+
+As we loped gayly along down the curving road, a startled quail would
+call out, "Who-are-you'-ah? who-are-you'-ah?" and another would cry
+"quit" in sharp warning tones; while a pair would scud across the road
+like little hens, ahead of the horse; or perhaps a covey would start up
+and whirr over the hillside. The sound of Canello's flying hoofs would
+often rouse a long-eared jack-rabbit, who with long leaps would go
+bounding over the flowers, to disappear in the brush.
+
+The narrow road wound through the dense bushy undergrowth known as
+'chaparral,' and as Canello galloped round the sharp curves I had to
+bend low under the sweeping branches, keeping alert for birds and
+animals, as well as Mexicans and Indians that we might meet.
+
+This corner of the valley was the mouth of Twin Oaks Canyon, and was a
+forest of brush, alive with birds, and visited only by the children
+whose small schoolhouse stood beside the giant twin oak from which the
+valley post-office was named. Flocks of migrating warblers were always
+to be found here; flycatchers shot out at passing insects; chewinks
+scratched among the dead leaves and flew up to sing on the branches;
+insistent vireos cried _tu-whip' tu-whip' tu-whip' tu-wee'-ah_, coming
+out in sight for a moment only to go hunting back into the impenetrable
+chaparral; lazuli buntings sang their musical round; blue jays--blue
+squawkers, as they are here called--went screaming harshly through the
+thicket; and the clear ringing voice of the wren-tit ran down the scale,
+now in the brush, now echoing from the bowlder-strewn hills above. But
+the king of the chaparral was the great brown thrasher. His loud
+rollicking song and careless independent ways, so suggestive of his
+cousin, the mockingbird, made him always a marked figure.
+
+There was one dense corner of the thicket where a thrasher lived, and I
+used to urge Canello through the tangle almost every morning for the
+pleasure of sharing his good spirits. He was not hard to find, big brown
+bird that he was, standing on the top of a bush as he shouted out
+boisterously, _kick'-it-now, kick'-it-now, shut'-up shut'-up, dor'-a-thy
+dor'-a-thy_; or, calling a halt in his mad rhapsody, slowly drawled out,
+_whoa'-now, whoa'-now_. After listening to such a tirade as this, it
+was pleasant to come to an opening in the brush and find a band of
+gentle yellow-birds leaning over the blossoms of the white
+forget-me-nots.
+
+There were a great many hummingbirds in the chaparral, and at a certain
+point on the road I was several times attacked by one of the pugnacious
+little warriors. I suppose we were treading too near his nest, though I
+was not keen-eyed enough to find it. From high in the air, he would come
+with a whirr, swooping down so close over our heads that Canello started
+uneasily and wanted to get out of the way. Down over our heads, and then
+high up in the air, he would swing back and forth in an arc. One day he
+must have shot at us half a dozen times, and another day, over a spot in
+the brush near us,--probably, where the nest was,--he did the same thing
+a dozen times in quick succession.
+
+In the midst of the brush corner were a number of pretty round oaks, in
+one of which the warblers gathered. My favorite tree was in blossom and
+alive with buzzing insects, which may have accounted for the presence of
+the warblers. While I sat in the saddle watching the dainty birds decked
+out in black and gold, Canello rested his nose in the cleft of the tree,
+quite unmindful of the busy warblers that flitted about the branches,
+darting up for insects or chasing down by his nose after falling
+millers.
+
+One morning the ranchman's little girl rode over to school behind me on
+Canello, pillion fashion. As we pushed through the brush and into the
+opening by the schoolhouse, scattered over the grass sat a flock of
+handsome black-headed grosbeaks, the western representative of the
+eastern rose-breast, looking, in the sun, almost as red as robins. They
+had probably come from the south the night before. As we watched, they
+dispersed and sang sweetly in the oaks and brush.
+
+[Illustration: Black-headed Grosbeak.
+
+(One half natural size.)]
+
+[Illustration: Rose-breasted Grosbeak.
+
+(One half natural size.)]
+
+In the giant twin oak under whose shadow the the little schoolhouse
+stood was an owl's nest. When I stopped under it, nothing was to be seen
+but the tips of the ears of the brooding bird. But when I tried to hoot
+after the manner of owls, the angry old crone rose up on her feet above
+the nest till I could see her round yellow eyes and the full length of
+her long ears. She snapped her bill fiercely, bristled up, puffing out
+her feathers and shaking them at us threateningly. Poor old bird! I was
+amused at her performances, but one of her little birds lay dead at the
+foot of the tree, and I trembled for the others, for the school-children
+were near neighbors. Surely the old bird needed all her devices to
+protect her young. One day I saw on one side of the nest, below the big
+ears of the mother, the round head of a nestling.
+
+It was pleasant to leave the road to ride out under the oaks along the
+way. There was always the delightful feeling that one might see a new
+bird or find some little friend just gone to housekeeping. One morning I
+discovered a bit of a wren under an oak with building material in her
+bill. She flew down to a box that lay under the tree and I dismounted to
+investigate. A tin can lay on its side in the box, and a few twigs and
+yellowish brown oak leaves were scattered about in a casual way, but the
+rusted lid of the can was half turned back, and well out of sight in the
+inside was a pretty round nest with one egg in it. I was
+delighted,--such an appropriate place for a wren's nest,--and sat down
+for her to come back. She was startled to find me there, and stopped on
+the edge of the board when just ready to jump down. She would have made
+a pretty picture as she stood hesitating, with her tail over her back,
+for the sun lit up her gray breast till it almost glistened and warmed
+her pretty brown head as she looked wistfully down at the box. After
+twisting and turning she went off to think the matter over, and,
+encouraged perhaps by my whistle, came back and hopped down into the
+little nest.
+
+Two weeks later I was much grieved to find that the nest had been broken
+up. A horse had been staked under the tree, but he could not have done
+the mischief; for while the eggs were there, the nest itself was all
+jumbled up in the mouth of the can. I could not get it out of my mind
+for days. You become so much interested in the families you are watching
+that you feel as if their troubles were yours, and are haunted by the
+fear that they will think you have something to do with their accidents.
+They had taken me on probation at first, and at last had come to trust
+me--and then to imagine that I could deceive them and do the harm
+myself!
+
+When Canello and I left the brushy side of the canyon and started across
+the valley, the pretty little horned larks, whose reddish backs matched
+the color of the road, would run on ahead of us, or let the horses come
+within a few feet of them, squatting down ready to start, but not taking
+wing till it seemed as if they would get stepped on. Sometimes one sat
+on a stone by the roadside, so busy singing its thin chattering song
+that it only flitted on to the next stone as we came up; for it never
+seemed to occur to the trustful birds that passers-by might harm them.
+
+One of our most interesting birds nested in holes in the open
+uncultivated fields down the valley,--the burrowing owl, known
+popularly, though falsely, as the bird who shares its nest with prairie
+dogs and rattlesnakes. Though they do not share their quarters with
+their neighbors, they have large families of their own. We once passed a
+burrow around which nine owls were sitting. The children of the ranchman
+called the birds the 'how-do-you-do owls,' from the way they bow their
+heads as people pass. The owls believe in facing the enemy, and the
+Mexicans say they will twist their heads off if you go round them times
+enough.
+
+One of our neighbors milked his cows out in a field where the burrowing
+owls had a nest, and he told me that his collie had nightly battles with
+the birds. I rode down one evening to see the droll performance, and
+getting there ahead of the milkers found the bare knoll of the pasture
+peopled with ground squirrels and owls. The squirrels sat with heads
+sticking out of their holes, or else stood up outside on their hind
+legs, with the sun on their light breasts, looking, as Mr. Roosevelt
+says, like 'picket pins.' The little old yellowish owls who matched the
+color of the pasture sat on the fence posts, while the darker colored
+young ones sat close by their holes, matching the color of the earth
+they lived in. As I watched, one of the old birds flew down to feed its
+young. A comical little fellow ran up to meet his parent and then
+scudded back to the nest hole, keeping low to the ground as if afraid of
+being seen, or of disobeying his mother's commands. When the ranchman
+came with his cows the small owls ducked down into their burrows out of
+sight.
+
+Romulus, the collie, went up to the burrows and the old owls came
+swooping over his back screaming shrilly--the milkers told me that they
+often struck him so violently they nipped more than his hair! When the
+owls flew at him, Romulus would jump up into the air at them, and when
+they had settled back on the fence posts he would run up and start them
+off again. The performance had been repeated every night through the
+nesting season, and was getting to be rather an old story now, at least
+to Romulus. The ranchman had to urge him on for my benefit, and the owls
+acted as if they rather enjoyed the sport, though with them there was
+always the possibility that a reckless nestling might pop up its head
+from the ground at the wrong moment and come to grief. It would be
+interesting to know if the owls were really disturbed enough to move
+their nest another year.
+
+When Canello and I faced home on our daily circuit of the valley, we
+often found the vineyard well peopled. In April, when it was being
+cultivated, there was a busy scene. All the blackbirds of the
+neighborhood--both Brewer's and redwings--assembled to pick up grubs
+from the soft earth. A squad of them followed close at the plowman's
+heels, others flew up before his horse, while those that lagged behind
+in their hunt were constantly flying ahead to catch up, and those that
+had eaten all they could sat around on the neighboring grape-vines. The
+ranchman's son told me that when he was plowing and the blackbirds were
+following him, two or three 'bee-birds,' as they call the Arkansas and
+Cassin's flycatchers, would take up positions on stakes overlooking the
+flock; and when one of the blackbirds got a worm, would fly down and
+chase after him till they got it away, regularly making their living
+from the blackbirds, as the eagles do from the fish hawks.
+
+[Illustration: In Hot Pursuit.
+
+(Brewer's Blackbird and Bee-birds.)]
+
+One day in riding by the vineyard, to my surprise and delight I saw one
+of the handsome yellow-headed blackbirds sitting with dignity on a
+grape-vine. Although his fellows often flock with redwings, this bird
+did not deign to follow the cultivator with the others, but flew off and
+away while I was watching, showing his striking white shoulder patches
+as he went. The distinguished birds were sometimes seen assembled
+farther down the valley; and I once had a rare pleasure in seeing a
+company of them perched high on the blooming mustard.
+
+The son of the ranchman told me an interesting thing about the ordinary
+blackbirds. He said he had seen a flock of perhaps five hundred fly down
+toward a band of grazing sheep, and all but a few of the birds light on
+the backs of sheep. The animals did not seem to mind, and the birds flew
+from one to another and roosted and rode to their heart's content. They
+would drop to the ground, but if anything startled them, fly back to
+their sheep again. Sometimes he had seen a few of the blackbirds picking
+out wool for their nests by bracing themselves on the backs of the
+sheep, and pulling where the wool was loose. He had also seen the birds
+ride hogs, cattle, and horses; but he said the horses usually switched
+them off with their tails.
+
+On our way home we passed a small pond made by the spring rains. Since
+it was the only body of water for miles around, it was especially
+refreshing to us, and was the rendezvous of all our feathered
+neighbors--how they must have wished it would last all through the hot
+summer months! As I rode through the long grass on the edge of the pond,
+dark water snakes often wriggled away from under Canello's feet; but he
+evidently knew they were harmless, for he paid no attention to them,
+though he was mortally afraid of rattlers. I did not like the feeling
+that any snake, however innocent, was under my feet, so would pull him
+up out of the grass onto a flat rock overlooking the pond.
+
+In the fresh part of the morning, before the fog had entirely melted
+away, the round pool at our feet mirrored the blue sky and the small
+white clouds. If a breath of wind ruffled the water into lines, in a
+moment more it was sparkling. Along the margin of the water was a border
+of wild flowers, pink, purple, and gold; on one side stood a group of
+sycamores, their twisted trunks white in the morning sun and their
+branches full of singing birds; while away to the south a line of dark
+blue undulating hills was crowned by the peak from which we had looked
+off on the mountains of Mexico. The air was ringing with songs, the
+sycamores were noisy with the chatter of blackbirds and bee-birds, and
+the bushes were full of sparrows.
+
+There was an elder on the edge of the pond, and the bathers flew to this
+and then flitted down to the water; and when they flew up afterwards,
+lighted there to whip the water out of their feathers and sun themselves
+before flying off. I never tired watching the little bathers on the
+beach. One morning a pipit came tipping and tilting along the sand,
+peeping in its wild, sad way. Another time a rosy-breasted linnet
+stepped to the edge of the pond and dipped down daintily where the water
+glistened in the sunshine, sending a delicate circle rippling off from
+its own shadow. Then the handsome white and golden-crowned sparrows came
+and bathed in adjoining pools. When one set of birds had flown off to
+dry their feathers, others took their places. A pair of blackbirds
+walked down the sand beach, but acted absurdly, as if they did not know
+what to do in water--it was a wonder any of the birds did in dry
+California! Two pieces of wood lay in the shallows, and the blackbirds
+flew to them and began to promenade. The female tilted her tail as if
+the sight of herself in the pond made her dizzy, but the male finally
+edged down gingerly and took a dip or two with his bill, after which
+both flew off.
+
+On the mud flats on one side of the pond, bee-birds were busy
+flycatching, perching on sticks near the ground and making short sallies
+over the flat. Turtle doves flew swiftly past, and high over head hawks
+and buzzards circled and let themselves be borne by the wind.
+
+Swallows came to the pond to get mud for their nests. A long line of
+them would light on the edge of the water, and then, as if afraid of
+wetting their feet, would hold themselves up by fluttering their long
+pointed wings. They would get a little mud, take a turn in the air, and
+come back for more, to make enough to pay them for their long journeys
+from their nests. Sometimes they would skim over the pond without
+touching the surface at all, or merely dip in lightly for a drink in
+passing; at others they would take a flying plunge with an audible
+splash. Now and then great flocks of them could be seen circling around
+high up against a background of clouds and blue sky.
+
+One day I had a genuine excitement in seeing a snow-white egret perched
+on a bush by the water. I rode home full of the beautiful sight, but
+alas, my story was the signal for the ranchman's son to seize his gun
+and rush after the bird. Fortunately he did not find him, although he
+did shoot a green heron; but it was probably a short reprieve for the
+poor hunted creature.
+
+Canello was so afraid of miring in the soft ground that it was hard to
+get him across some places that seemed quite innocent. He would test the
+suspicious ground as carefully as a woman, one foot at a time; and if he
+judged it dangerous, would take the bits, turn around and march off in
+the opposite direction. I tried to force him over at first, but had an
+experience one day that made me quite ready to take all suggestions in
+such matters. This time he was deceived himself. We were on our homeward
+beat, off in the brush beyond the vineyard. I was watching for chewinks.
+We came to what looked like an old road grown up with soft green grass,
+and it was so fresh and tender I let Canello graze along at will; while
+keeping my eyes on the brush for chewinks. Suddenly Canello pricked up
+his ears and raised his head with a look of terror. Rattlesnakes or
+miring--it was surely one or the other! When I felt myself sinking, I
+knew which. I gave the horse a cut with the quirt to make him spring off
+the boggy ground, and looked off over his side to see how far down he
+was likely to go, but found myself going down backwards so fast I had to
+cling to the pommel. I lashed Canello to urge him out, and he struggled
+desperately, but it was no use. We were sinking in deeper and deeper,
+and I had to get off to relieve him of my weight. By this time his long
+legs had sunk in up to his body. On touching the ground I had a horrible
+moment thinking it might not hold me; but it bore well. Seizing the
+bridle with one hand and swinging the quirt with the other, I shouted
+encouragement to Canello, and, straining and struggling, he finally
+wrenched himself out and stepped on _terra firma_--I never appreciated
+the force of that expression before! The poor horse was trembling and
+exhausted when I led him up to high ground to remount, and neither of
+us had any desire to explore boggy lands after that.
+
+On our morning round, Canello and I attended strictly to business,--he
+to grazing, I to observing; but on our afternoon rides I, at least, felt
+that we might pay a little more heed to the beauties of the valley and
+the joys of horsebacking. Sometimes we would be overtaken by the night
+fog. One moment the mustard would be all aglow with sunshine; at the
+next, a sullen bank of gray fog would have risen over the mountain,
+obscuring the sun which had warmed us and lighted the mustard; and in a
+few moments it would be so cold and damp that I would urge Canello into
+a lope to warm our blood as we hurried home.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE LITTLE LOVER.
+
+
+[Illustration: The Little Lover.
+
+(Western House Wren.)]
+
+ON my second visit to California, I spent the winter in the Santa Clara
+valley, riding among the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, where
+flocks of Oregon robins were resting from the labors of the summer and
+passing the time until they could fly home again; but when the first
+spring wild flowers bloomed on the hills I shipped my little roan
+mustang by steamer from San Francisco to San Diego, and hurried south to
+meet him and spend the nesting season in the little valley of the Coast
+Mountains which, five years before, had proved such an ideal place to
+study birds.
+
+I went down early in March, to be sure to be in time for the nesting
+season; but spring was so late that by the last of April hardly a nest
+had been built, and it seemed as if the birds were never coming back.
+The weather was gloomy and the prospect for the spring's work looked
+discouraging, when one morning I rode over to the line of oaks and
+sycamores at the mouth of Ughland canyon I had not visited before. In
+this dry, treeless region of southern California only a little water is
+needed to cover the bare valley bottoms with verdure. The rushing
+streams that flow down the canyons after the winter rains fill their
+mouths with rich groves of brush, oaks and sycamores; while lines of
+trees border the streams as far as they extend down the valleys. Before
+the streams go far, the thirsty soil drinks them up, leaving only dry
+beds of sand bordered by trees, until the rains of the following winter.
+In April, the water in this particular canyon mouth had already
+disappeared, and the wide sand bed under the trees alone remained to
+tell of the short-lived stream. But the resulting verdure was enough to
+attract the birds. Apparently a party of travelers had just arrived. The
+brush and trees were full of song--yellowbirds, linnets, chewinks,
+doves, wrens, and, best of all, a song sparrow,--bless his
+heart!--singing as if he were on a bush in New York state. It was more
+cheering than anything I had heard in California.
+
+When able to listen to something besides song sparrows, I realized that
+from the trees in front of me was coming the rippling merry song of a
+wren. Wrens are always interesting,--droll, individual little
+scraps,--and having found their nests in sycamore holes before, I let my
+horse, Mountain Billy, graze nearer to the tree from which the sound
+came. Before long the small brown pair flew away together across the oat
+field that spread out from the mouth of the canyon. While they were
+gone, I took the opportunity to inspect the tree, and found a large hole
+with twigs sticking out suggestively. Presently, back flew one of the
+wrens with more building material. But this line of sycamores was off
+from the highway, and the bird was not used to prying equestrians; so
+when she found Mountain Billy and me planted in front of her door, she
+doubted the wisdom of showing us that it was her door. Chattering
+nervously, she would back and fill, flying all but to the door and then
+flitting off again. She could not make up her mind to go inside. But
+soon her mate came and--unmindful of visitors, ardent little lover that
+he was--sang to her so gayly that it put her in heart; and before I knew
+it she had slipped into the tree.
+
+Here was a nest, at last, right over my eye. To encourage myself while
+waiting for something to happen, I began a list with the heading NESTS,
+when something caught my eye overhead, and glancing up, behold, a
+goldfinch walked down a branch and seated herself in a round cup! A few
+moments later--buzz--whirr--a hummingbird flew to a nest among the brown
+leaves of one of the low-hanging oak sprays not ten feet away! I simply
+stared with delight and astonishment. No need of a list for
+encouragement now. From Billy's back I could look down into the little
+cup, which seemed the tiniest in the world. Forgetting the little lover
+and his mate, I sat still and watched this small household.
+
+The young were out of the eggs, though not much more, and their mother
+sat on the edge of the nest feeding them. She curved her neck over till
+her long bill stood up perpendicularly, when she put it gently into the
+gaping bills of her young; the smallest of bills, not more than an
+eighth of an inch long, I should judge. I never saw hummingbirds fed so
+gently. Probably the small bills and throats were so delicate the mother
+was afraid they would not bear the usual jabbing and pumping.
+
+When the little ones were fed, the old bird got down in the nest,
+fluffing her feathers about her in a pretty motherly way and settling
+herself comfortably to rest, apparently ignoring the fact that Billy was
+grazing close beside her. She may have had her qualms, but no mother
+bird would leave her tender young uncovered on such a cold morning.
+
+While she was on the nest, there was an approaching whirr, followed by a
+retreating buzz--had the father bird started to come to the nest and
+fled at sight of me? Remembering the evidence Bradford Torrey collected
+to prove that the male bird is rarely seen at the nest, I wondered if
+his absence might be explained by his usually noisy flight, for it would
+attract the notice of man or beast.
+
+Two days later I carefully touched the tip of my finger to the back of
+one of the tiny hummingbirds,--it was very skinny, I regret to
+state,--and at my touch the little thing opened its wee bill for food.
+That day the mother fed the birds in the regulation way, when we were
+only four feet distant. I was near enough to see all the horrors of the
+performance. She thrust her bill down their throats till I felt like
+crying out, "For mercy's sake, forbear!" She plunged it in up to the
+very hilt; it seemed as if she must puncture their alimentary canals.
+
+While waiting for the wrens, I buckled Billy's bridle around the
+sycamore and threw myself down on the warm sand under the beautiful
+tree. The little horse stood near, outlined against the blue sky, with
+the sunlight dappling his back, while I looked up into the light green
+foliage of the white sycamore overhead. There seemed to be a great deal
+of light stored in these delicate trees. The undersides of the big,
+soft, white leaves looked like white Canton flannel; the sunlight
+mottled the whitish bark of the trunks and branches; and a great limb
+arched above me, making a high vaulted chamber whose skylights showed
+the deep blue above.
+
+But there were the little lover and his mate, and I must turn my glass
+on them. She came first, with long streamers hanging from her bill, and
+at sight of me got so flustered that one of her straws slipped out and
+went sailing down to the ground. When the pair had gone again, two
+linnets came along. The female saw the wren's doorway, and being in
+search of apartments flew up to look at the house. When she came out she
+and her mate talked it over and, apparently, she told him something that
+aroused his curiosity--perhaps about the wren's twigs she found
+inside--for he flew into the dark hole and looked around as she had
+done. Then both birds went off to inspect other holes in the tree. The
+master of the wren cottage came back in time to see them on their
+rounds, and taking up his position in front of his door sang out loudly,
+with wings hanging and a general air of, "This is _my_ house, I'd have
+you understand!"
+
+When the lord of the manor had flown away, his lady came. I thought
+perhaps he had told her of the visitors and she had come to see if they
+had disturbed any of her sticks, for she brought no material. She was
+afraid to go to the nest in my presence, but flew to a branch near by
+and leaned down so far it was a wonder she didn't tip over as she stared
+anxiously at the hole--a bad way to keep a secret, my little lady! I
+thought. When her merry minstrel came, his song again gave her courage
+and she flew inside, turning in the doorway, however, to look out at me.
+
+But what with horses grazing under her windows and linnets making free
+with her nest, the poor wren was unsettled in her mind. Possibly it
+would be wiser to take out her sticks and build elsewhere. She went
+about looking at vacant rooms and examined one opening in the side of
+the trunk where I could see only her profile as she hung out of the
+hole.
+
+For some time the timid bird would not accept Mountain Billy and me as
+part of her immediate landscape, and I watched the premises a number of
+days, getting nothing but my labor for my pains, as far as wrens were
+concerned.
+
+One day when she did not come, I thought it was a good chance to get a
+study of the hummingbird's nest; but alas!--the delicate little
+structure hung torn and dangling from the twig, with nothing to tell
+what had become of the poor little hummers. I moralized sadly upon the
+mutability of human affairs as I took the tattered nest and tied it up
+in a corner of my handkerchief; for it was all that was left of the
+little home built with such exquisite care and brooded over so
+tenderly.
+
+The yellowbird's nest came to an untimely end, too, although its start
+was such a bright one. It was a disappointment, for the goldfinches are
+such trustful birds and so affectionate and tender in their family
+relations that they always win one's warm interest. At first, when this
+mother bird went to the nest, her mate stationed himself on the nest
+tree, leaning over and looking down anxiously at Billy and me; but
+before their home was broken up the watchful guardian fed his pretty
+mate at her brooding when we were below.
+
+We had a great many visitors while waiting for the wrens: neighbors came
+to sit in our green shade, young housekeepers came looking for rooms to
+rent, and old birds who were leading around their noisy families came to
+dine with us. Once a pair of flickers started to light in the tree, but
+they gave a glance over the shoulder at me and fled. Later I found their
+secret--down inside an old charred stump up the canyon. Occasionally I
+got sight of gay liveries in the green sycamore tops. A Louisiana
+tanager in his coat of many colors stopped one day, and another time,
+when looking up for dull green vireos, my eye was startled by a flaming
+golden oriole. The color was a keen pleasure. Lazuli buntings, relatives
+of our eastern indigo-bird, sang so much within hearing that I felt sure
+they were nesting in the weeds outside the line of sycamores--I did find
+a pair building in the malvas beyond; a pair of bush-tits, cousins of
+the chickadees, came with one of their big families; California towhees
+often appeared sitting quietly on the branches; linnets were always
+stopping to discuss something in their emphatic way; clamorous blue jays
+rushed in and set the small birds in a panic, but seeing me quickly took
+themselves off; and a pair of wary woodpeckers hunted over the sycamore
+trunks and worked so cautiously that they had finished excavating a nest
+only just out of my sight on the other side of the wren tree trunk
+before I seriously suspected them of domestic intentions.
+
+One day, when watching at the tree, a great brown and black lizard that
+the children of the valley call the 'Jerusalem overtaker' came worming
+down the side of an oak that I often leaned against. The rough bark
+seemed such a help to it that I imagined the wrens had done wisely in
+choosing a smooth sycamore to build in. I looked narrowly at their nest
+hole with the thought in mind and saw that the birds had another point
+of vantage in the way the trunk bulged at the hole--it did not seem as
+if a large lizard could work itself up the smooth slippery rounding
+surface, however much given to eggs for breakfast. But in the West
+Indies lizards walk freely up and down the marble slabs, so it is
+dangerous to say what they cannot do.
+
+Billy had a surprise one day greater than mine over the lizard. He was
+grazing quietly near where I sat under the wren tree, when he suddenly
+threw up his head. His ears pointed forward, his eyes grew excited, and
+as he gazed his head rose higher and higher. I jumped from the ground
+and put my hand on the pommel ready to spring into the saddle. As I did
+so, across the field I caught a glimpse of a great fawn-colored animal
+with a white tip to its tail, bounding through the brush--a deer! Then I
+heard voices through the trees and saw the red shawl of a woman in a
+wagon rumbling up the road the deer must have crossed.
+
+When Mountain Billy and I pulled ourselves together and started after
+the deer, the poor horse was so unstrung he made snakes of all the
+sticks he saw and shied at all imaginable bugaboos along the way. We
+were too late to see the deer again, but found the marks of its hoofs
+where it had jumped a ditch and sunk so deep in the fine sand on the
+other side that it had to take a great leap to recover itself.
+
+The sight of the deer made Billy as nervous as a witch for days. Every
+time we went to visit the wrens he would stand with eyes glued to the
+spot where it had appeared, and when a jack-rabbit came out of the brush
+with his long ears up, Billy started as if he thought it would devour
+him. I was perplexed by his nervousness at first, but after much
+pondering reasoned it out, to my own satisfaction at least. His name
+was Mountain Billy, and in the days when he had been a wayward bucking
+mustang he lived in the Sierra. Now, even in the hills surrounding our
+valley, colts were killed by mountain lions. How much more in the
+Sierra. Mountain lions are large fawn-colored animals: that was it:
+Mountain Billy was suffering from an acute attack of association of
+ideas. The sight of the deer had awakened memories of the nightmare of
+his colthood days.
+
+We made frequent visits to the wren tree, and both my nervous little
+horse and I had a start one morning, for as we rode in, a covey of quail
+flew up with a whirr from under the tree in front of us.
+
+When the wren had become reconciled to us she worked rapidly, flying
+back and forth with material, followed by her mate, who sang while she
+was on the nest and chased away with her afterwards. Often when she
+appeared in the doorway ready to go, his song, which had been just a
+merry round before, at sight of her would suddenly change to a most
+ecstatic love song. He would sit with drooping tail, his wings sometimes
+shaking at his sides, at others raised till they almost met over his
+back, trembling with the excitement of his joy. This peculiar tremulous
+motion of the wings was marked in both wrens; their emotions seemed too
+large for their small bodies.
+
+I found the wrens building, the last of April. The third week in May
+the little lover was singing as hard as ever. I wrote in my
+note-book--"Wrens do not take life with proper seriousness, their duties
+certainly do not tie them down." When the eggs were in the nest, if her
+mate sang at her door, the mother bird would fly out to him and away
+they would go together; for it never seemed to occur to the care-free
+lover that he might brood the eggs in her absence.
+
+When the young hatched, however, affairs took a more serious turn.
+Mother wren at least was kept busy looking for spiders, and later, when
+both were working together, if not hunting among the green treetops, the
+pretty little brown birds often flew to the ground and ran about under
+the weeds to search for insects. Once when the mother bird had flown up
+with her bill full, she suddenly stopped at the twig in front of the
+nest, looking down, her tail over her back wren fashion, the sun on her
+brown sides, and her bill bristling with spiders' legs.
+
+[Illustration: A Trying Moment.]
+
+On June 7 I noticed a remarkable thing. For more than five weeks, all
+through the building and brooding, the little lover had been acting as
+if on his honeymoon--as if the nest were a joke and there were nothing
+for him to do in the world but sing and make love to his pretty mate--as
+if life were all 'a-courtin'.' On this day he first came to the tree
+with food, sang out for his spouse, gave her the morsel, and flew off.
+Later in the morning he brought food and his mate carried it to the
+young. But afterwards, when she started to take a morsel from him,
+behold! he--the gay, frivolous little beau, the minstrel lover--actually
+acted as if he didn't want to give it up, as if he wanted to feed his
+own little birds himself. With wings trembling at his sides he turned
+his back on his mate and started to walk down the branch away from her!
+But he was too fond of her to even seem to refuse her anything, and so,
+coming back, gave her the morsel. She probably divined his thought, and,
+let us hope, was glad to have him show an interest in his children at
+last; at all events, when he came again with food and clung to the tip
+of a drooping twig waiting although she first lit above him and came
+down toward him with bill wide open and wings fluttering in the pretty,
+helpless, coquettish way female birds often tease to be fed; suddenly,
+as if remembering, she flew off, and--he went in to the nest himself! It
+was a conquest; the little lover was not altogether lacking in the
+paternal instinct after all! I looked at him with new respect.
+
+On June 12 I wrote: "The wrens seem to have settled down to business."
+It was delightful to find the small father actually taking turns feeding
+the young. I saw him feed his mate only once or twice, and noticed much
+less of the quivering wings, though after leaving the nest he would
+sometimes light on a branch and move them tremulously at his sides for a
+moment. June 15 I wrote: "The birds are feeding rapidly to-day. I hear
+very little song from the male; probably he has all he can attend to.
+I'd like to know how many young ones there are in that hole." At all
+events, the voices of the young were getting stronger and more
+insistent, and it is no bagatelle to keep half a dozen gaping mouths
+full of spiders, as any mother bird can tell. This particular mother
+wren, however, seemed to enjoy her cares. She often called to the young
+from a branch in front of the nest before going in, and stopped to call
+back to them with a motherly-sounding _krup-up-up_ as she stood in the
+entrance on leaving.
+
+One day as one of the old birds stood in the doorway its mate flew into
+the nest right over its head. The astonished doorkeeper was so startled
+that it took to its wings.
+
+Before this, in watching the wrens, I had looked off across a sunny
+field of golden oats, against the background of blue hills. On June 14,
+when I went to the nest, the mowers had been at work around the
+sycamores and the oat-field was full of cocks. Just as the wren was most
+anxious for peace and quietness, for a safe world into which to launch
+her brood, up came this rout of haymakers with all their clattering
+machines, laying low the meadows to her very door.
+
+No wonder the little bird met me with nerves on edge. When the eggs had
+first hatched, she had objected to me, but mildly. To be sure, once when
+she found me staring she flew away over my head, scolding as much as to
+say, "Stop looking at my little birds," and finding me there when she
+came back, shook her wings at her sides and scolded hard, though her
+bill was full; but still her disapproval did not trouble me; it was too
+sociable. But now, for some time, affected by the shadow of coming
+events, she had been growing more and more fidgety under my gaze,
+darting inside, then whisking back to the door to look at me, in again
+to her brood and out to me, over and over like a flash--or, like a poor
+little troubled mother wren, distracted lest her unruly youngsters
+should pop out of the hole in the tree trunk when I was below to catch
+them.
+
+On this day, when the wren came up from the dark nest pocket and found
+me below, she called back to her little ones in such distress that I
+felt reproached. By gazing fixedly through my glass into the dark hole I
+could see the head of a sprightly nestling pop up and turn alertly from
+side to side as if returning my inspection. The old wren's calls made me
+think of a human mother who can no longer control her big wayward
+offspring and has to entreat them to do as she bids. It was as if she
+said, "Oh, _do_ be good children, _do_ keep still; _do_ put your heads
+back; you _naughty_ children, you _must_ do as I tell you!"
+
+On June 16, six weeks after I had found the birds building, I wrote in
+my note-book: "I am astonished every morning when I come and find the
+wrens still here, but perhaps it's easier feeding them in one spot than
+it would be chasing around after them in half a dozen different places."
+
+The young were chattering inside the nest. They all talked at once as
+children will, but one small voice assumed the tones of the mother;
+probably the oldest brother speaking with the air of authority
+featherless children sometimes assume with the weaker members of the
+family. When a parent came, I saw the big brother's head pop up from
+behind the wall,--the nest was in a pocket below,--and by the time the
+old bird got there with food the big throat blocked the way for the
+little ones down behind. Sometimes I could see a flutter of small wings
+and tails, when the birds were being fed.
+
+As nothing happened, I went off to watch another nest, but in an hour
+was back to make sure of seeing the small wrens when they left the nest.
+A loud continuous scolding met me on approaching, and one of the old
+wrens, with bill full of insects, flew--not up to the nest--but down in
+among the weeds! In less than an hour that whole brood of wrens had
+flown, and were three or four rods away in the high weeds--safe! I was
+taken aback. They had stolen a march on me. Surely I had not been
+treated as was fit and proper, being one of the family!
+
+It was amusing to see the young ones fly. They whirled away on their
+wings as if they had been flitting around in the big world always; but
+their stubby tails sadly interfered with their progress, and they came
+to earth before they meant.
+
+Weak cries came from the young hidden in the weeds. They could fly, but
+it was different from being safe inside a tree trunk! I hardly
+recognized their weak appealing voices, after the stentorian tones that
+had issued from the old nest.
+
+The weeds were a most admirable cover, and the dead stalks sticking up
+through them served as sentry posts, from which the old birds scolded me
+when I followed too close on their heels. The youngsters sometimes
+appeared on the stalks, and looked very pert on their long legs with
+their short tails cocked over their backs.
+
+In the afternoon I went again to see the little family to which I had
+become so much attached and which were now slipping away from me. They
+had been led farther up the canyon, where, at a turn in the dry bed of
+the stream, the thick cover of weeds was still more protected by brush
+and overhanging trees, and the whole thicket was warmed by the afternoon
+sunshine. The old birds were busily flying back and forth feeding their
+invisible young. They scolded me as they flew past, but kept right on
+with their work.
+
+There was little use trying to keep track of the brood after that, and I
+thought I had given them up quite philosophically, reflecting that it
+was pleasant to leave them in such a sunny protected place. Still, day
+after day in riding along the line of sycamores on my way to other
+nests, it gave me a pang of loneliness to pass the old deserted wren
+tree where I had spent so many happy hours; and though the sycamores
+were silent, I could always hear and see the little lover singing to his
+pretty mate.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT.
+
+
+WHEN watching the little lover and his brood, I heard familiar voices
+farther down the line of oaks, voices of little friends I had made on my
+first visit to California, and had always remembered with lively
+interest as the jauntiest, most individual bits of humanity I had ever
+known in feathers. So, when Mountain Billy and I could be spared by the
+other bird families we were watching, we set out to hunt up the little
+bluish gray western gnatcatchers.
+
+The (sand) stream that widened under the wren's sycamores narrowed up
+the canyon to a--dry ditch, I should say, if it were not disrespectful
+to speak that way of a channel that once a year carries a torrent which
+excavates canals in the meadows. Billy and I started up this sand ditch,
+so narrow between its weed-grown banks that there was barely room for
+us, and so arched over in places by chaparral that we could get through
+only when Billy put down his ears and I bowed low on the saddle.
+
+[Illustration: Nest of Western Gnatcatcher.
+
+(From a photograph.)]
+
+We had not gone far before we heard the gnatcatchers, bluish gray mites
+with heads that are always cocked on one side or the other to look down
+at something, and long tails that are always flipping about as their
+owners flaunt gayly through the bushes: At sound of their voices I
+pulled Billy up out of the ditch, and, slipping from his back, sat down
+on the ground to wait for the birds. Eureka! there, in a slender young
+oak on the edge of the stream not a rod away, one of the pair was
+gliding off its nest, a beautiful lichen-covered, compact little
+structure such as I had admired years before. I was jubilant. What a
+relief! I had fully expected it to be inside the dense brush, where no
+mortal could tell what was going on; and here it was out in the plain
+light of day. What a delightful time I should have watching it! Before
+leaving the spot, in imagination I had followed the brood out into the
+world and filled a note-book with the quaint airs and graces of the
+piquant pair.
+
+When insinuating yourself into the secrets of the bird world, it is not
+well to be too obtrusive at first: it is a mistake to spend the day when
+you make your first call; so contenting myself with thinking of the
+morrow, and fixing the small oak in my memory, I took myself off before
+the blue-gray should tell on me to her mate. As I rose to go, a dove
+flew out of the oak--she had been brooding right over my head. Another
+nest, and a mourning dove's, one of the most gentle and winning of
+birds! Surely my good star was in the ascendent!
+
+The next day, forgetful of this second nest, I rode Billy right up under
+the oak, and was startled to find the pretty dove sitting quietly over
+our heads, looking down at us out of her gentle eyes. It was a pleasant
+surprise. She let me talk to her, but when I had dismounted Billy
+tramped around so uneasily that the saddle caught in the oak branches
+and scared the poor bird away. I had hardly seated myself when the
+jaunty little gnatcatcher came flying over and lit in an upper branch
+of the tree. What a contrast she was to the quiet dove! With many flirts
+of the tail she hopped down to the nest, jumping from branch to branch
+as if tripping down a pair of stairs. When she dropped into her deep cup
+her small head stuck up over one edge, her long tail pointed over the
+other.[2]
+
+I looked away a moment, and on glancing back found the nest empty.
+On the  instant, however, came the sound of my small friend's voice.
+Such a talkative  little person!--not one of your
+creep-in-and-out-of-the-nest-without-anybody's-knowing-it kind of a
+bird, not she! Her remarks sounded as if made over my head, and when
+Billy stamped about the brush and rapped the saddle trying to switch off
+flies, I imagined guiltily that they were addressed to me; but while I
+wondered if she would keep away all the rest of the morning because she
+had discovered me, back she came, talking to herself in complaining
+tones and whipping her tail impatiently, even after she stood on the
+edge of the nest, evidently absorbed in her own affairs, quite to the
+exclusion of the person down in the brush who thought herself so
+important!
+
+My doves were attending to me, however, altogether too much. The
+brooding bird was anxious to go to her nest. After flying out where she
+could see me, she whizzed toward it; but, fearful, hesitated and talked
+it over with her mate--both birds cooed with inflated breaths. After
+that the branches rattled overhead, but even then, though my back was
+turned, the timid bird dared not stay. She must make another inspection.
+From an opposite oak she peered through the branches, moving her head
+excitedly, and calling out her impressions to her mate. Meanwhile, he
+had flown down the sand stream and called back quite calmly. I, also,
+cooed reassuringly to her, and soon she quieted down and began to plume
+her feathers on the sunny branch. As the gnatcatchers did not honor us
+with their attention even when Billy stalked around in plain sight, I
+moved a little closer to their nest to give the dove more freedom; and
+soon the gentle bird slipped back to her brooding.
+
+Before leaving I went to see the dove in the oak, and spoke caressingly
+to her, admiring her soft dove-colored feathers and shining iridescent
+neck. She was on her own ground there, and felt that she could safely be
+friends, so she only winked in the sun, paying no heed to her mate when
+he called warningly. It was especially pleasant to watch this reserved
+lady-like bird, after the flippant tell-all-you-know little gnat.
+
+On going away, Billy and I took a run up the canyon. Billy was in high
+spirits, and went racing up the narrow road, winding and turning
+through the chaparral, brushing me against the the stiff scrub oak and
+loping under low branches so fast that the sharp leaves snapped back,
+stinging my cheeks. We had a gay ride, with a spice of excitement thrown
+in; for on our way home, in the thick dust across our path, besides the
+pretty quail tracks that made wall-paper patterns on the road, were the
+straight trails of gopher snakes, and the scalloped one of a rattlesnake
+we had been just too late to meet.
+
+At our next session with the blue-grays, when she was on the nest, her
+mate came back to relieve her and cried in his quick cheerful way, "Here
+I am, here I am!" Either she was taking a nap or didn't want to stir,
+for she didn't budge till he called insistently, "_Here_ I am, _here_ I
+am!" Then he hopped down in her place, and raising his head above the
+nest, remarked again, as if commenting upon the new situation, "Here I
+am!"
+
+It was quite a different matter when she came back to work. She only
+called "hello," not even hinting that he should make way for her, but he
+hopped off at the first sound of her voice, flying away promptly to
+another tree and calling back like a gleeful boy let out of school,
+"Here I am!"
+
+She was no more eager to go to the nest than he, however, and once when
+she came flirting leisurely along from twig to twig, she stopped a long
+time on the edge of the nest and leaned over, presumably to arrange the
+eggs; perhaps she and her mate had different views as to their proper
+positions. The next time I visited the gnats, she acted as if she really
+could not make up her mind to settle down to brooding on such a
+beautiful morning. The fog had cleared away and the air was fresh and
+full of life; goldfinches and lazuli buntings were singing merrily, and
+light-hearted vireos were shouting _chick-a-de-chick'-de-villet'_ from
+the brush. How much pleasanter it would be for such an airy fairy to go
+off for a race with her mate than to settle down demurely tucked into a
+cup! "Tsang," she cried impatiently as she flew up to catch a fly. She
+flirted about the branches, whipped up in front of the nest, couldn't
+make up her mind to go in, and flounced off again. But the eggs would
+get cold if she didn't cover them, so back she came, hopped up on the
+edge of the nest, and stood twisting and turning, glancing this way and
+that as though for a fly to chase, till she happened to look down at the
+eggs; then she whipped her tail, dropped in and--jumped out again!
+
+During the morning when she was away and her mate was waiting for her to
+come back to 'spell' him, he too got impatient. He hopped out of the
+nest crying, "Now here I am, quick, come quick!" and as he flew off,
+sang out in his funny little soliloquizing way, "Well, here I go; here I
+go!"
+
+His restless spouse had only just settled down when a wren-tit--a
+wren-like bird with a long tail--flew into a bush near her oak, and she
+darted out of the nest to snap her bill over his head. I thought it
+merely an excuse to leave her brooding. Calling out "tsang," she again
+flew at the brown bird who was hopping around in the bush, so
+innocently, as I thought. Conqueror for the moment, she flaunted back to
+the nest, and after much ado finally settled down.
+
+For a time all was quiet. Hearing the low cooing of doves, I went to
+talk to the pretty bird in the oak, and she let me come near enough to
+see her bluish bill and quiet eyes. As I returned to the gnatcatchers, a
+chewink was hoeing in the sand stream. Again the wren-tit approached
+stealthily. I watched with languid interest till he got to the gnat's
+tree. The instant he touched foot upon her domain, she dashed down at
+him, crying loudly and snapping her bill in his face. The brown bird
+dodged her blows, held his footing in spite of her, and slowly made his
+way up to the nest. I was astonished and frightened. He leaned over the
+nest, and--what he actually did I could not see, for by that time the
+blue-gray's cries had called her mate and they were both screaming and
+diving down at him as if they would peck his eyes out; and it sounded as
+if they hit him on the back good and hard.
+
+A peaceful lazuli bunting, hearing the commotion, came to investigate,
+but when she saw what was happening held back against the side of a twig
+as though afraid of getting struck, and soon flew off, having no desire
+to get mixed up in that affray.
+
+When the wren-tit had at last been driven from his position, the
+gnatcatchers flew up into a tree and, standing near together, talked the
+matter over excitedly. Then one of them went back to the nest, reached
+down into it and brought up something that it appeared to be eating. Its
+mate went to the nest and did the same, after which one of them flew
+away with a broken eggshell. When the little creatures turned away from
+the plundered nest they broke out into cries of distress that were
+pitiful to hear. I felt indignant at the wren-tit. How could a bird with
+eggs of its own do such a cruel thing? But then, I reflected, we who
+pretend to be better folks than wren-tits do not always spare our
+neighbors because of our own troubles. When the poor birds had carried
+away their broken eggshell, one of them came and tugged at the nest
+lining till it pulled out a long horsehair and what looked like a
+feather, apparently trying to take out everything that the egg had
+soiled.
+
+When the little housekeeper was working over her nest, a brown towhee
+flew into the tree. On the instant there was a flash of wings--the gnat
+was ready for war. But after a fair look at the big peaceful bird, she
+flew to the next tree without a word--she evidently knew friends from
+enemies. I never liked the towhee so well before. But though the
+blue-gray had nothing to say against her neighbor sitting up in the tree
+if he chose, her nerves were so unstrung that when she lit in the next
+tree she cried out "tsang" in an overburdened tone. It sounded so unlike
+the usual cry of the light-hearted bird, it quite made me sad.
+
+Whether the poor little gnatcatchers did not recover from this attack
+upon their home, and took their nest to pieces to put it up elsewhere,
+as birds sometimes do; or whether the stealthy wren-tit again crept in
+like a thief in the night to plunder his neighbor's house, I do not
+know; but the next time I went to the oak the nest was demolished. It
+was a sorry ending for what had promised to be such an interesting and
+happy home.
+
+My poor dove's nest had a tragic end, too. What happened I do not know,
+but one day the body of a poor little pigeon lay on the ground under the
+nest. My sympathies went out to both mothers, but especially to the
+gentle dove, now a mourner, indeed.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[2] As this little pair dressed like twins, I could only infer which was
+which from the song and the actions of the two, which were quite
+distinct.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+WAS IT A SEQUEL?
+
+
+AFTER the wren-tit stole in like a thief in the night and broke up the
+pretty home of the gnatcatchers, I suspected that they took their house
+down to put it up again in a safer place, and so was constantly on the
+lookout to find where that safer place was. At last, one day, I heard
+the welcome sound of their familiar voices, and following their calls
+finally discovered them flying back and forth to a high branch on an old
+oak-tree; both little birds working and talking together. Mind, I do not
+stake my word on this being the same pair of gnats; but the nest
+followed closely on the heels of the plundered one, which was a point in
+its favor, and, being anxious to take up the lines with my small friends
+again, I let myself think they were the birds of the sand ditch nest. It
+was such a delight to find them that I deserted the nest I had been
+watching, and went to spend the next morning with my old friends. The
+tree they had chosen was a high oak in an open space in the brush, and
+they were building fifteen or twenty feet above the ground--so high that
+it was necessary to keep an opera-glass focused on the spot to see what
+was going on at their small cup.
+
+As the birds worked, I was filled with forebodings by seeing a pair of
+wren-tits on the premises. They went about in the casual indifferent way
+sad experience had shown might cover a multitude of evil intentions, and
+which made me suspect and resent their presence. How had they found the
+poor little gnats? It was not hard to tell. How could they help finding
+such talkative fly-abouts? But if birds are in danger from all the
+world, including those who should be their comrades and champions, why
+should not builders keep as still at the nest as brooding birds, instead
+of heedlessly giving information to observers that lurk about taking
+notes for future misdeeds? But then, could gnatcatchers keep still
+anywhere at any time? No, that was not to be hoped for. I could only
+watch the little chatterers from hour to hour and be thankful for every
+day that their home was unmolested.
+
+It was interesting to see how the jaunty indifferent gnats would act
+when settling down to plain matters of business. Strange to say, they
+proved to be the most energetic, tireless, and skillful of builders.
+Their floor had been laid--on the branch--before I arrived on the scene,
+and they were at work on the walls. The plan seemed to be twofold, to
+make the walls compact and strong by using only fine bits of material
+and packing them tightly in together; while at the same time they gave
+form to the nest and kept it trim and shipshape by moulding inside, and
+smoothing the rim and outside with neck and bill. Sometimes the bird
+would smooth the brim as a person sharpens a knife on a whetstone, a
+stroke one way and then a stroke the other. When the sides were not much
+above the floor, one bird came with a bit of material which it proceeded
+to drill into the body of the wall. It leaned over and threw its whole
+weight on it, almost going head first out of the nest, and had to
+flutter its wings to recover itself. The birds usually got inside to
+build, but there was a twig beside the nest that served for scaffolding,
+and they sometimes stood on that to work at the outside.
+
+At first they seemed to take turns at building, working rapidly and
+changing places quite regularly; but one morning when seated under the
+oak I saw that things were not as they had been. Perhaps a difference of
+opinion had arisen on architectural points, and Mrs. Gnatcatcher had
+taken matters into her own hands. At all events, this is what happened:
+instead of rapid changes of place, when one of the gnats was at work its
+mate flew up and started to go to the nest, hesitated, and backed away;
+then unwilling to give up having a finger in the pie, advanced again.
+This was kept up till the little bird put its pride in its pocket, and
+gently gave over its cherished bit of material to its mate at the nest!
+
+Now as these gnatcatchers had the bad taste to dress so nearly alike
+that I could not tell them apart, I was left to my own surmises as to
+which took the material. Still, who could it have been but Mrs. Gnat?
+Would she give over the house to Mr. Gnat at this critical moment? She
+doubtless wanted to decorate as she went along, and men aren't supposed
+to know anything about such trivial matters! On the other hand, it might
+easily be he, for, supposing he had come of a family of superior
+builders, surely he would want to see to the laying of substantial
+walls; and unquestionably a good wall was the important part of this
+nest. Alas! it was a clear case of "The Lady or the Tiger." To
+complicate matters, the birds worked so fast, so high over my head, and
+so hidden by the leaves, that I had much ado to keep track of their
+exchanges at all. If I could only catch them and tie a pink ribbon
+around one of their necks!--then, at least, I would know which was doing
+what, or if it was doing what it hadn't done before! It is inconsiderate
+enough of birds to wear the same kind of clothes, but to talk alike too,
+when hidden by the leaves--that, indeed, is a straw to break the camel's
+back. If small gray gnatcatchers up in the treetops had only been big
+black magpies low in the brush, my testimony regarding their
+performances might be of more value; but then, the magpies of my
+acquaintance were so shy they would have none of me; so although life
+and field work are full of disappointments, they are also full of
+compensations.
+
+Not being able to do anything better with the gnat problems, I guessed
+at which was which--when I saw No. 2 go to the nest and No. 1
+reluctantly make way as if not wanting No. 2 to meddle, I drew my own
+conclusions, although they were not scientifically final. I did see one
+thing that was satisfactory, as far as it went. One of the birds came
+with big tufts of stiff moss sticking out from either side of its bill
+like great mustachios, and going up to the nest, handed them to its
+mate--actually something big enough for a person to see, once! Whatever
+had been the birds' first feeling as to which should put the bricks in
+the wall, it was all settled now, and the little helpmate flew off
+singing out such a happy good-by it made one feel like writing a sermon
+on the moral effect of renunciation. After that I was sure the little
+helper fed his (?) mate on the nest, again singing out good-by as he
+flitted away. Once when he (?) brought material he found her (?) busy
+with what she had, and so went to the other end of the branch, and
+waited till she was ready for it, when he flew back and gave it to her.
+
+It was a real delight to watch the little blue-grays at their work. Once
+as one of them started to fly away--I am sure this was she--she suddenly
+stopped to look back at the nest as if to think what she wanted to get
+next; or, perhaps, just to get the effect of her work at a distance, as
+an artist walks away from his painting; or as any mother bird would stop
+to admire the pretty nest that was to hold her little brood. Another
+time one of the gnats,--I was sure this was he,--having driven off an
+enemy, flipped his tail by the nest with a paternal air of satisfaction.
+The birds made one especially pretty picture; the little pair stood
+facing each other close to the nest, and the sun, filtering through the
+green leaves over their heads, touched them gently as they lingered near
+their home.
+
+One morning when a gnat was in the nest a leaf blew down past it,
+startling it so it hopped out in such a hurry that the first I knew it
+was seated beneath the nest, flashing its tail.
+
+Back and forth the dainty pair flew across the space of blue sky between
+the oak and the brush. They went so fast and carried so little it seemed
+as if they might have made their heads save their heels--they brought so
+little I couldn't see that they brought anything; but I feel delicate
+about telling what I know about nest-making, and it may be that this was
+just the secret of the wonderfully compact solid walls of the nest; a
+little at a time, and that drilled in to stay.
+
+When one of the small builders flew down near me--within two yards--for
+material, I felt greatly pleased and flattered. Her mate warned her, but
+she paid no particular attention to him, and with jaunty twists and
+turns hopped about on the dead limbs, giving hurried jabs at the cobwebs
+she was gathering. Once she rubbed her little cheek against a twig as if
+a thread of the cobweb had gotten in her eye. She dashed in among the
+dead leaves after something, but flew back with a start as if she had
+seen a ghost. She was not to be daunted, however, and after whipping her
+tail and peering in for a moment, hopped bravely down again. Sometimes,
+when collecting cobweb, the gnat would whip its tail and snap its bill
+snip, snip, snip, as if cutting the web with a pair of scissors.
+
+I was amused one day by seeing a gnat fly down from the oak to the brush
+with what looked like a long brown caterpillar. The worm dangling from
+the tip of his beak was almost as large as the bird, and the little
+fellow had to crook his tail to keep from being overbalanced and going
+on his bill to the ground.
+
+As the nest went up, the leaves hid it; but I could still see the small
+wings and tails flip up in the air over the edge of the cup and jerk
+about as the bird moulded. I watched the workers so long that I felt
+quite competent to build a nest myself, till happening to remember that
+it required gnatcatcher tools.
+
+Ornithologists are discouraging people to wait for, and Mountain Billy
+got so restless under the gnat tree that he had to invent a new
+fly-brush for himself. On one side of the oak the branches hung low to
+the ground, and he pushed into the tangle till the green boughs rested
+on his back and he was almost hidden from view. Meanwhile I sat close
+beside the chaparral wall, where all sorts of sounds were to be heard,
+suggestive of the industries of the population hidden within the brush
+at my back. Hearing small footsteps, I peered in through the brown
+twigs, and to my delight saw a pair of stately quail walking over the
+ground, promenading through the brush avenues. Afterwards I caught sight
+of a gray animal, probably a wood rat, running down a branch behind me,
+and heard queer muffled sounds of gnawing.
+
+Suddenly, looking back, I was startled to see a big ringed brown and
+yellow snake lying like a rope at the foot of the gnat's tree, just
+where I had sat. He was about four feet long, and had twenty-three
+rings. He started to wind into the crotch of the oak as if meaning to
+climb the tree, but instead, crept to a stump and festooned himself
+about it worming around the holes as he might do if looking for nest
+holes. Imagine how a mother bird would feel to have him come stealing
+upon her little brood in that horrid way! When he crawled over the dead
+leaves I noted with a shiver that he made no sound. Thinking of the
+gnats, I watched his every movement till he had left the premises and
+wormed his way off through the brush. Though quite engrossed with the
+gnats, it was finally forced upon me that there is more than one family
+in the world. The blue-gray's oak was a favored one. A pair of
+hang-birds had built there before the gnats came, and now two more
+families had come, making four for the big oak.
+
+When first suspecting a house on the north side of the tree, I moved my
+chair over there. Presently a vireo with disordered breast feathers flew
+down on a dead twig close to the ground and leaned over with a tired
+anxious look, and craning her neck, turned her head on one side, and
+bent her eyes on the ground scrutinizingly. Then she hopped down, picked
+up something, threw it away, picked up another piece and flew back to
+her perch with it, as if to make up her mind if she really wanted that.
+Then her mate came, raised his crown and looked down at the bit of
+material with a puzzled air as if wishing he knew what to say; as if he
+felt he ought to be able to help her decide. But he seemed helpless and
+could only follow her around when she was at work, singing to her
+betimes, and keeping off friends or enemies who came too near. When the
+young hatched I noticed a still more marked difference between the
+nervous manners of the gnats, and the repose of vireos. While the gnat
+flipped about distractedly, the vireo sat calmly beside her nest, an
+exquisite white basket hanging under the leaves in the sun, or walked
+carefully over the branches looking for food for the young. Some days
+before finding out the facts, I suspected that the wood pewee perching
+on the old tree had more important business there, for the way he and
+his mate flew back and forth to the oak top was very pointed. So again I
+moved my chair. To my delight the wood pewee flew up in the tree, sat
+down on a horizontal crotch, and went through the motions of moulding.
+
+There were two birds, however, that simply used the tree as a
+resting-place, as far as I ever knew. A hummingbird perched on the tip
+of a twig, looking from below like a good sized bumblebee as he preened
+his feathers and looked off upon the world below. At the other side of
+the oak a pretty pink dove perched on a sunny branch that arched against
+the blue sky. It sat close to the branch beside the green leaves and
+dressed its feathers or dozed quietly in the sun. We had other visitors
+that the house owners did not accept so willingly. The gnatcatchers up
+the sand ditch whose nest had been broken up by the thief-in-the-night
+did not object to brown chippies, but perhaps, if this were the same
+pair, they had been made suspicious by their trouble. In any case, when
+a brown chippie lit on a limb near the nest, quite accidentally I
+believe, and turned to look at the pretty structure, quite innocently I
+feel sure, the little gnats fell on him tooth and nail, and when he hid
+under the leaves where they could not reach him they fluttered above the
+leaves, and the moment he ventured from under cover were both at him
+again so violently that at the first opportunity he took to his wings.
+There was one curious thing about this attack and expulsion; the gnats
+did not utter a word during the whole affair! I had never known them to
+be silent before when anything was going on--rarely when there wasn't.
+
+Another morning when I rode in there was a great commotion up in the
+oak. A chorus of small scolding voices, and a fluttering of little wings
+among the branches told that something was wrong, while a large form
+moving deliberately about in the tree showed the intruder to be a blue
+jay! Aha! the gossips would wag their heads. I disapprove of gossip, but
+as a truthful reporter am obliged to say that I saw the blue jay pitch
+down into the brush with something white in his bill--perhaps a
+cocoon--and that thereupon a great weeping and wailing arose from the
+little folk up in the treetop. A big brown California chewink stood by
+and watched the--robbery(?), great big fellow that he was; and not once
+offered to take the little fellows' part. I felt indignant. Why didn't
+he pitch into the big bully and drive him off before he had stolen the
+little birds' egg--if it was an egg. A grosbeak called _ick'_ from the
+treetop, but thought he'd better not meddle; and--it was a pair of
+wren-tits who looked out from a brush screen and then skulked off,
+chuckling to themselves, I dare say, that some one else was up to their
+tricks. It gave my faith in birds a great shock, this, together with the
+pillage of the gnat's nest by the thief-in-the-night. My spleen was
+especially turned against the brown chewink; he certainly was a good
+fighter, and might at least have helped to clear the neighborhood of
+such a suspicious character.
+
+Where did the egg--if it was an egg--come from? The vireos and pewees
+and gnats were still building, I reflected thankfully, though trembling
+for their future; and fortunately the hangbird had young. Perhaps the
+jay had found a nest that I could not discover.
+
+After that, things went on quietly for several days. The gnats got
+through with their building, and went off for a holiday until it should
+be time to begin brooding. They flitted about the branches warbling, as
+if having nothing special to do; dear little souls, at work as at play,
+always together. One of them unexpectedly found himself near me one day;
+but when he saw it was only I, whipped his tail and exclaimed "_Oh, it's
+you'. I'm' not afraid._"
+
+This peace and quietness, however, did not last. The gnats' house was
+evidently haunted, and they did not like--blue--ghosts. One morning
+when I got to the oak it was all in a hubbub, and the vireo was
+scolding loudly at a blue jay. When the giant pitched into the brush the
+wren-tit chattered, and I thought perhaps the jay was teaching him how
+it feels to have a shoe pinch. A few moments later I was amazed to see a
+gnat jab at the wall till it got a bill full of material and then fly
+off to the brush with it! My little birds had moved! Evidently the
+neighborhood was too exciting for them. More than ten days of hard
+work--no one can tell how hard until after watching a gnatcatcher
+build--had been spent in vain on this nest; and if, as suspected, this
+was their second, how much more work did that mean? It was a marvel that
+the birds could get courage to start in again, especially if they had
+had two homes broken up already.
+
+From my position at the big oak I could see that the gnats were carrying
+the frame of the old house to a small oak in the brush. The wood pewee
+had moved too, and to my surprise and pleasure I found it had begun its
+nest on a branch under the gnats, so that both families could be watched
+at the same time. I nearly got brushed off the saddle promenading
+through the stiff chaparral to find a place where the nests could be
+seen from the ground; but when at last successful, I too, like the rest
+of the old oak's floating population, moved to pastures new. Hanging my
+chair on the saddle, I made Billy carry it for me; then I buckled the
+reins around the trunk of the oak and withdrew into the brush to watch
+my birds. It was a cozy little nook, from which Billy could be heard
+stamping his feet to shake off the flies. The little crack in the
+chaparral was a pleasant place to sit in, protected as it was from the
+wind, with the sun only coming in enough to touch up the brown leaves on
+the ground and warm the fragrant sage, bringing out its delicious spicy
+aromatic smell.
+
+The pewee did not altogether relish having us established under its vine
+and fig-tree. When it saw Billy under the tree it whistled, and the bit
+of grass it had brought for its nest went sailing down to the brush
+disregarded. It did not think us as bad as the blue jay, however, for it
+came back with a long stem of grass in its bill, and, lighting on a high
+branch, called _pee-ree_. To be sure, when it had gone to the nest and I
+was inconsiderate enough to turn a page in my note-book, it dashed off.
+But if murder will out, so will good intentions; and before long the
+timid bird was brooding its nest with Billy and me for spectators.
+
+The gnat's nest here was so much lower than the other one that it was
+much easier to watch. The first day the birds built rapidly. One of them
+got his spider's web from beside the pewee's nest, when the pewee was
+away. He started to go for it once after the owner had returned, caught
+sight of him, stopped short, and much to my amusement concluded to sit
+down and preen his feathers! The pewee had one special bare twig of his
+own that he used for a perch, and when the gnat seated himself there in
+his neighbor's absence he looked so small that I realized what a mite of
+a bird he really was. He sometimes sat there and talked while his mate
+moulded the nest.
+
+When the gnats got to brooding, many of the same pretty performances
+were repeated that had marked the first nest of all, up in the sand
+ditch. When the bird on the nest hopped out and called, "Come, come,"
+its mate, who had been wandering around in the sunny green treetop,
+called out in sweet tones, "Good-by, good-by."
+
+When waiting for the gnats to do something, I heard a little sound in
+the oak brush by my side, and, looking through the brown branches, saw a
+wren-tit come hopping toward me. It came up within three feet of me,
+near enough to see its bright yellow eyes. I began to wonder if it had a
+nest near by, and felt my prejudices melting away and my heart growing
+tender. Some thieves are very honest fellows; it is largely a difference
+in ethical standards! I began to feel a keen interest in the bird and
+its affairs, for the wren-tit was really a most original bird, and one I
+was especially anxious to study.
+
+My newly awakened interest was not chilled by any second tragedy; all
+went well with the little blue-grays. The day the gnat's eggs hatched,
+the old folks performed most ludicrously. Perhaps they were young
+parents, and this being their first brood, maternal and paternal love
+had not yet blinded their eyes to the ridiculous; so that they looked
+down on these skinny, squirming, big-eyeballed prodigies with mingled
+emotions. It looked very much as if they were surprised to find that
+their smooth pretty eggs had suddenly turned into these ugly, weak,
+hungry things they did not know what to do with. At first it seemed that
+something must be wrong at the nest; the little gnat shook her wings and
+tail beside it as if afraid of soiling herself; and when she hopped into
+it, jerked out again and flitted around distractedly. Every time the
+birds looked into the nest they got so excited that, had they been
+girls, they surely would have hopped up and down wringing their hands. I
+laughed right out alone in the brush, they acted so absurdly.
+
+They began feeding the nestlings in the most remarkable way I had ever
+witnessed. When the young mother was on the nest her mate came and
+brought her the food, whereupon, instead of jumping off the nest and
+feeding the young in the conventional way, she simply raised up on her
+feet and, apparently, poked the food backwards into the bills of the
+young under her breast! Even when the gnats got to feeding more in the
+ordinary way, they did it nervously. They fed as if expecting the young
+to bite them. They would fly up on the branch beside the nest, give a
+jab down at the youngsters, whip tails and flee. You would have thought
+the young parents had been playing house before, and their dolls had
+suddenly turned into live hungry nestlings.
+
+I watched this family till the house was deserted, and I had to ride
+along a line of brush before finding them. The young were now pretty
+silvery-breasted creatures who sat up in a small oak while the old birds
+hunted through the brush for food for them. Though I rode Billy into the
+chaparral after them, and got near enough to see the black line over the
+bill of the father bird, they did not mind, but hunted away quite
+unconcernedly; for we had been through many things together, and were
+now old and fast friends.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+LITTLE PRISONERS IN THE TOWER.
+
+
+I HAD not spent many days in The Little Lover's door-yard before
+realizing that there was something in the wind. If an inoffensive person
+fancies sitting in the shade of a sycamore with her horse grazing
+quietly beside her, who should say her nay? If, at her approach,
+a--feathered--person steals away to the top of the highest, most distant
+oak within sight and, silent and motionless, keeps his eye on her till
+she departs; if, as she innocently glances up at the trees, she
+discovers a second--feathered--person's head extended cautiously from
+behind a trunk, its eyes fixed on hers; or if, as she passes along
+a--sycamore--street, a person comes to a window and cranes his neck to
+look at her, and instantly leaves the premises; then surely, as the
+world wags, she is quite justified in having a mind of her own in the
+matter. Still more, when it comes to finding chips under a window--who
+could do aught but infer that a carpenter lived within? Not I. And so it
+came about that I discovered that one of the apartments in the back of
+the wren sycamore had been rented by a pair of well-meaning but
+suspicious California woodpeckers, first cousins of the eastern
+red-heads.
+
+[Illustration: California Woodpecker.
+
+(One half natural size.)]
+
+[Illustration: Red-headed Woodpecker--Eastern.
+
+(One half natural size.)]
+
+It is unpleasant to be treated as if you needed detectives on your
+track. It strains your faith in human nature; the rest of the world must
+be very wicked if people suspect such extremely good creatures as you
+are! And then it reflects on the detectives; it shows them so lacking in
+discernment. Nevertheless, "A friend should bear his friend's
+infirmities," and I was determined to be friends with the woodpeckers.
+One of them kept me waiting an hour one morning. When I first saw it, it
+was on its tree trunk, but when it first saw me, it promptly left for
+parts unknown. I stopped at a respectful distance from its tree--several
+rods away--and threw myself down on the warm sand in the bed of the dry
+stream, between high hedges of exquisite lemon-colored mustard. Patient
+waiting is no loss, observers must remember if they would be consoled
+for their lost hours. In this case I waited till I felt like a
+lotus-eater who could have stayed on forever. A dove brooded her eggs on
+a branch of the spreading sycamore whose arms were outstretched
+protectingly above me; the sun rested full on its broad leaves, and bees
+droned around the fragrant mustard, whose exquisite golden flowers waved
+gently against a background of soft blue California sky.
+
+But that was not the last day I had to wait. It was over a month before
+the birds put any trust in me. The nest hole was excavated before the
+middle of May; on June 15 I wrote in my note-book, "The woodpecker has
+gotten so that when I go by she puts her head out of the window, and
+when I speak to her does not fly away, but cocks her head and looks down
+at me."[3] That same morning the bird actually entered the nest in my
+presence. She came back to her sycamore while I was watching the wrens,
+and flew right up to the mouth of the nest. She was a little nervous.
+She poked in her bill, drew it back; put in her head, drew that back;
+then swung her body partly in; but finally the tip of her tail
+disappeared down the hole.
+
+The next morning, in riding by, I heard weak voices from the woodpecker
+mansion. If young were to be fed, I must be on hand. Such luxurious
+observing! Riding Mountain Billy out into the meadow, I dismounted, and
+settled myself comfortably against a haycock with the bridle over my
+arm. It was a beautiful quiet morning. The night fog had melted back and
+the mountains stood out in relief against a sky of pure deep blue. The
+line of sycamores opposite us were green and still against the blue; the
+morning sun lighting their white trunks and framework. The songs of
+birds filled the air, and the straw-colored field dotted with haycocks
+lay sunning under the quiet sky. In the East we are accustomed to speak
+of "the peace of evening," but in southern California in spring there is
+a peculiar interval of warmth and rest, a langorous pause in the growth
+of the morning, between the disappearance of the night fog and the
+coming of the cool trade wind, when the southern sun shines full into
+the little valleys and the peace of the morning is so deep and serene
+that the labor of the day seems done. Nature appears to be slumbering.
+She is aroused slowly and gently by the soft breaths that come in from
+the Pacific. On this day I watched the awakening. Up to this time not a
+grass blade had stirred, but while I dreamed a brown leaf went whirling
+to the ground, the stray stalks of oats left from the mowing began to
+nod, and the sycamore branches commenced to sway. Then the breeze
+swelled stronger, coming cool and fresh from the ocean; the yellow
+primroses, around which the hummingbirds whirred, bowed on their stately
+stalks, and I could hear the wind in the moving treetops.
+
+Mountain Billy grazed near me till it occurred to him that stubble was
+unsatisfactory, when he betook him to my haycock. Though I lectured him
+upon the rights of property and enforced my sermon with the point of the
+parasol, he was soon back again, with the amused look of a naughty boy
+who cannot believe in the severity of his monitor; and later, I regret
+to state, when I was engrossed with the woodpeckers, a sound of munching
+arose from behind my back.
+
+The woodpeckers talked and acted very much like their cousins, the
+red-heads of the East. When they went to the nest they called
+_chuck'-ah_ as if to wake the young, flying away with the familiar
+rattling _kit-er'r'r'r'_. They flew nearly half a mile to their regular
+feeding ground, and did not come to the nest as often as the wrens when
+bringing up their brood. Perhaps they got more at a time, filling their
+crops and feeding by regurgitation, as I have seen waxwings do when
+having a long distance to go for food.
+
+I first heard the voices of the young on June 16; nearly three weeks
+later, July 6, the birds were still in the nest. On that morning, when
+I went out to mount Billy, I was shocked to find the body of one of the
+old woodpeckers on the saddle. I thought it had been shot, but found it
+had been picked up in the prune orchard. That afternoon its mate was
+brought in from the same place. Probably both birds had eaten poisoned
+raisins left out for the gophers. The dead birds were thrown out under
+the orange-trees near the house, and not many hours afterward, when I
+looked out of the window, two turkey vultures were sitting on the
+ground, one of them with a pathetic little black wing in his bill. The
+great black birds seemed horrible to me,--ugly, revolting creatures. I
+went outside to see what they would do, and after craning their long red
+necks at me and stalking around nervously a few moments they flew off.
+
+Now what would become of the small birds imprisoned in the tree trunk,
+with no one to bring them food, no one to show them how to get out, or,
+if they were out, to feed them till they had learned how to care for
+themselves? Sad and anxious, I rode down to the sycamore. I rapped on
+its trunk, calling _chuck'-ah_ as much like the old birds as possible.
+There was an instant answer from a strong rattling voice and a weak
+piping one. The weak voice frightened me. If that little bird's life
+were to be saved, it was time to be about it. The ranchman's son was
+pruning the vineyard, and I rode over to get him to come and see how we
+could rescue the little prisoners.
+
+On our way to the tree we came on a gopher snake four feet long. It was
+so near the color of the soil that I would have passed it by, but the
+boy discovered it. The creature lay so still he thought it was dead; but
+as we stood looking, it puffed itself up with a big breath, darted out
+its tongue, and began to move off. I watched to see how it made the
+straight track we so often saw in the dust of the roads. It bent its
+neck into a scallop for a purchase, while its tapering tail made an S,
+to furnish slack; and then it pulled the main length of its body along
+straight. It crawled noiselessly right to the foot of the woodpecker
+tree, but was only hunting for a hole to hide in. It got part way down
+one hole, found that it was too small, and had to come backing out
+again. It followed the sand bed, taking my regular beat, from tree to
+tree! To be sure, gopher snakes are harmless, but they are suggestive,
+and you would rather their ways were not your ways.
+
+Although the little prisoners welcomed us as rescuers should be
+welcomed, they did it by mistake. They thought we were their parents. At
+the first blow of the axe their voices hushed, and not a sound came from
+them again. It seemed as if we never should get the birds out.
+
+It looked easy enough, but it wasn't. The nest was about twelve feet
+above the ground. The sycamore was so big the boy could not reach around
+it, and so smooth and slippery he could not get up it, though he had
+always been a good climber. He clambered up a drooping branch on the
+back of the tree,--the nest was in front,--but could not swing himself
+around when he got up. Then he tried the hollow burned at the foot of
+the tree. The charred wood crumbled beneath his feet, but at last, by
+stretching up and clinging to a knothole, he managed to reach the nest.
+
+As his fingers went down the hole, the young birds grabbed them,
+probably mistaking them for their parents' bills. "Their throats seem
+hot," the boy exclaimed; "poor hungry little things!" His fingers would
+go through the nest hole, but not his knuckles, and the knothole where
+he steadied himself was too slippery to stand on while he enlarged the
+hole. It was getting late, and as he had his chores to do before dark I
+suggested that we feed the birds and leave them in the tree till
+morning; but the rescuer exclaimed resolutely, "We'll get them out
+to-night!" and hurried off to the ranch-house for a step-ladder and axe.
+
+The ladder did not reach up to the first knothole, four or five feet
+below the nest; but the boy cut a notch in the top of the knot and stood
+in it, practically on one foot, and held on to a small branch with his
+right hand--the first limb he trusted to broke off as he caught
+it--while with the left hand he hacked away at the nest hole. It was a
+ticklish position and genuine work, for the wood was hard and the
+hatchet dull.
+
+I stood below holding the carving-knife,--we hadn't many tools on the
+ranch,--and as the boy worked he entertained me with an account of an
+accident that happened years before, when his brother had chopped off a
+branch and the axe head had glanced off, striking the head of the boy
+who was watching below. I stood from under as he finished his story, and
+inquired with interest if he were sure his axe head was tight! Before
+the lad had made much impression on the hard sycamore, he got so tired
+and looked so white around the mouth that I insisted on his getting down
+to rest, and tried to divert him by calling his attention to the sunset
+and the voices of the quail calling from the vineyard. When he went up
+again I handed him the carving-knife to slice off the thinner wood on
+the edge of the nest hole, warning him not to cut off the heads of the
+young birds.
+
+At last the hole was big enough, and, sticking the hatchet and knife
+into the bark, the lad threw one arm around the trunk to hold on while
+he thrust his hand down into the nest. "My, what a deep hole!" he
+exclaimed. "I don't know as I can reach them now. They've gone to the
+bottom, they're so afraid." Nearly a foot down he had to squeeze, but at
+last got hold of one bird and brought it out. "Drop him down," I cried,
+"I'll catch him," and held up my hands. The little bird came fluttering
+through the air. The second bird clung frightened to the boy's coat,
+but he loosened its claws and dropped it down to me. What would the
+poor old mother woodpecker have thought had she seen these first flights
+of her nestlings!
+
+I hurried the little scared brothers under my jacket, my best substitute
+for a hollow tree, and called _chuck'-ah_ to them in the most
+woodpecker-like tones I could muster. Then the boy shouldered the
+ladder, and I took the carving-knife, and we trudged home triumphant; we
+had rescued the little prisoners from the tower!
+
+When we had taken them into the house the woodpeckers called out, and
+the cats looked up so savagely that I asked the boy to take the birds
+home to his sister to keep till they were able to care for themselves.
+On examining them I understood what the difference in their voices had
+meant. One of them poked his head out of the opening in my jacket where
+he was riding, while the other kept hidden away in the dark; and when
+they were put into my cap for the boy to carry home, the one with the
+weak voice disclosed a whitish bill--a bad sign with a bird--and its
+feeble head bent under it so weakly that I was afraid it would die.
+
+Three days later, when I went up to the lad's house, it was to be
+greeted by loud cries from the little birds. Though they were in a box
+with a towel over it, they heard all that was going on. Their voices
+were as sharp as their ears, and they screamed at me so imperatively
+that I hurried out to the kitchen and rummaged through the cupboards
+till I found some food for them. They opened their bills and gulped it
+down as if starving, although their guardian told me afterwards that she
+had fed them two or three hours before.
+
+When held up where the air could blow on them, they grew excited; and
+one of them flew down to the floor and hid away in a dark closet,
+sitting there as contentedly as if it reminded him of his tree trunk
+home.
+
+I took the two brothers out into the sitting-room and kept them on my
+lap for some time, watching their interesting ways. The weak one I
+dubbed Jacob, which is the name the people of the valley had given the
+woodpeckers from the sound of their cries; the stronger bird I called
+Bairdi, as 'short' for _Melanerpes formicivorus bairdi_--the name the
+ornithologists had given them.
+
+Jacob and Bairdi each had ways of his own. When offered a palm, Bairdi,
+who was quite like 'folks,' was content to sit in it; but Jacob hung
+with his claws clasping a little finger as a true woodpecker should; he
+took the same pose when he sat for his picture. Bairdi often perched in
+my hand, with his bill pointing to the ceiling, probably from his old
+habit of looking up at the door of his nest. Sometimes when Bairdi sat
+in my hand, Jacob would swing himself up from my little finger, coming
+bill to bill with his brother, when the small bird would open his mouth
+as he used to for his mother to feed him. Poor little orphans, they
+could not get used to their changed conditions!
+
+They did other droll things just as their fathers had done before them.
+They used to screw their heads around owl fashion, a very convenient
+thing for wild birds who cling to tree trunks and yet need to know what
+is going on behind their backs. Once, on hearing a sudden noise, one of
+them ducked low and drew his head in between his shoulders in such a
+comical way we all laughed at him.
+
+I often went up to the ranch to visit them. We would take them out under
+a big spreading oak beside the house, where the little girl's mother sat
+with her sewing, and then watch the birds as we talked. When we put them
+on the tree trunk, at first they did not know what to do, but soon they
+scrambled up on the branches so fast their guardian had to climb up
+after them for fear they would get away. Poor little Jacob climbed as if
+afraid of falling off, taking short hops up the side of the tree,
+bending his stiff tail at a sharp angle under him to brace himself
+against the bark. Bairdi, his strong brother, was less nervous, and
+found courage to catch ants on the bark. Jacob did a pretty thing one
+day. When put on the oak, he crept into a crack of the bark and lay
+there fluffed up against its sides with the sun slanting across,
+lighting up his pretty red cap. He looked so contented and happy it was
+a pleasure to watch him. Another time he started to climb up on top of
+my head and, I dare say, was surprised and disappointed when what he had
+taken for a tree trunk came to an untimely end. When we put the brothers
+on the grass, one of them went over the ground with long hops, while the
+other hid under the rocking-chair. One bird seemed possessed to sit on
+the white apron worn by the little girl's mother, flying over to it from
+my lap, again and again.
+
+The woodpeckers had brought from the nest a liking for dark, protected
+places. Bairdi twice clambered up my hair and hung close under the brim
+of my black straw hat. Another time he climbed up my dress to my black
+tie and, fastening his claws in the silk, clung with his head in the
+dark folds as if he liked the shade. I covered the pretty pet with my
+hand and he seemed to enjoy it. When I first looked down at him his eyes
+were open, though he kept very still; but soon his head dropped on my
+breast and he went fast asleep, and would have had a good nap if Jacob
+had not called and waked him up.
+
+Jacob improved so much after the first few days--and some doses of red
+pepper--that we had to look twice to tell him from his sturdy brother.
+He certainly ate enough to make him grow. The birds liked best to be
+fed with a spoon; probably it seemed more like a bill. After a little,
+they learned to peck at their food, a sign I hailed eagerly as
+indicative of future self-support; for with appetites of day laborers
+and no one to supply their wants, they would have suffered sorely, poor
+little orphans! Sometimes, when they had satisfied their first hunger,
+they would shake the bread from their bills as if they didn't like it
+and wanted food they were used to.
+
+[Illustration: JACOB AND BAIRDI VISITING THE OLD NEST TREE]
+
+When one got hungry he would call out, and then his brother would begin
+to shout. The little tots gave a crooning gentle note when caressed, and
+a soft cry when they snuggled down in our hands or cuddled up to us as
+they had done under their mother's wing. Their call for food was a
+sibilant chirr, and they gave it much oftener than any of the grown-up
+woodpecker notes. But they also said _chuck'-ah_ and rattled like the
+old birds.
+
+I was glad there were two of them so they would not be so lonely. If
+separated they showed their interest in each other. If Bairdi called,
+Jacob would keep still and listen attentively, raising his topknot till
+every microscopic red feather stood up like a bristle, when he would
+answer Bairdi in a loud manly voice.
+
+It was amusing to see the small birds try to plume themselves. Sometimes
+they would take a sudden start to make their toilettes, and both work
+away vigorously upon their plumes. It was comical to see them try to
+find their oil glands. Had the old birds taught them how to oil their
+feathers while they were still in the nest? They were thickly feathered,
+but when they reached back to their tails the pink skin showed between
+their spines and shoulders, giving a good idea of the way birds'
+feathers grow only in tracts.
+
+When the little princes were about a month old, I arranged with a
+neighboring photographer to have them sit for their picture. He drove
+over to the sycamore, and the lad who had rescued the prisoners took
+them down to keep their appointment. One of them tried to tuck its head
+up the boy's sleeve, being attracted by dark holes. While we were
+waiting for the photographer, the boy put Jacob in a hollow of the tree,
+where he began pecking as if he liked it. He worked away till he
+squeezed himself into a small pocket, and then, with his feathers
+ruffled up, sat there, the picture of content. Indeed, the little fellow
+looked more at home than I had ever seen him anywhere. The rescuer was
+itching to put the little princes back in their hole, to see what they
+would do, but I wouldn't listen to it, being thankful to have gotten
+them out once.
+
+When Bairdi was on the bark and Jacob was put below him, he turned his
+head, raised his red cap, and looked down at his brother in a very
+winning way.
+
+Soon the photographer came, and asked, "Are these the little chaps that
+try to swallow your fingers?" We were afraid they would not sit still
+enough to get good likenesses, but we had taken the precaution to give
+them a hearty breakfast just before starting, and they were too sleepy
+to move much. In the picture, Jacob is clinging to the boy's hand in his
+favorite way, and Bairdi is on the tree trunk.
+
+Mountain Billy pricked up his ears when he discovered the woodpeckers
+down at the sycamore, but he often saw them up at the ranch and took me
+to make a farewell call on them before I left for the East. We found the
+birds perched on the tobacco-tree in front of the ranch-house, with a
+tall step-ladder beside it so the little girl could take them in at
+night. Their cup of bread and milk stood on the ladder, and when I
+called them they came over to be fed. They were both so strong and well
+that they would soon be able to care for themselves, as their fathers
+had done before them. And when they were ready to fly, they might have
+help; for an old woodpecker of their family--possibly an unknown
+uncle--had been seen watching them from the top of a neighboring oak,
+and may have been just waiting to adopt the little orphans. In any case,
+however they were to start out in the world, it was a great satisfaction
+to have rescued them from their prison tower.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[3] The difference in the dress of the woodpeckers is so slight that the
+sexes were not distinguished at this nest.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+HINTS BY THE WAY.
+
+
+ON our way back and forth along the line of oaks and sycamores belonging
+to the little prisoners, the little lover, and the gnatcatchers,
+Mountain Billy and I got a good many hints, he of places to graze, and I
+of new nests to watch.
+
+While waiting for the woodpeckers one day I saw a small brownish bird
+flying busily back and forth to some green weeds. She was joined by her
+mate, a handsome blue lazuli bunting, even more beautiful than our
+lovely indigo bunting, and he flew beside her full of life and joy. He
+lit on the side of a cockle stem, and on the instant caught sight of me.
+Alas! he seemed suddenly turned to stone. He held onto that stalk as if
+his little legs had been bars of iron and I a devouring monster. When he
+had collected his wits enough to fly off, instead of the careless gay
+flight with which he had come out through the open air, he timidly kept
+low within the cockle field, making a circuitous way through the high
+stalks.
+
+He could be afraid of me if he liked, I thought,--for after a certain
+amount of suspicion an innocent person gets resentful; at any rate, I
+was going to see that nest. Creeping up cautiously when the mother bird
+was away, so as not to scare her, and carefully parting the mallows, I
+looked in. Yes, there it was, a beautiful little sage-green nest of old
+grass laid in a coil. I felt as pleased as if having a right to share
+the family happiness.
+
+After that I watched the small worker gather material with new interest,
+knowing where she was going to put it. She worked fast, but did not take
+the first thing she found, by any means. With a flit of the wing she
+went in nervous haste from cockle to cockle, looking eagerly about her.
+Jumping down to the ground, she picked up a bit of grass, threw it down
+dissatisfied, and turned away like a person looking for something. At
+last she lit on the side of a thistle, and tweaking out a fibre flew
+with it to the nest.
+
+When the house was done, one morning in passing I leaned down from the
+saddle, and through the weeds saw her brown wings as she sat on the
+nest. A month after the first encounter with the father lazuli, I found
+him looking at me around the corner of a cockle stalk, and in passing
+back again caught him singing full tilt, though his bill was full of
+insects! After we had turned our backs, I looked over my shoulder and
+had the satisfaction of seeing him take his beakful to the nest. You
+couldn't help admiring him, for though not a warrior who would snap his
+bill over the head of an enemy of his home, he had a gallant holiday air
+with his blue coat and merry song, and you felt sure his little brown
+mate would get cheer and courage enough from his presence to make family
+dangers appear less frightful. Even this casual acquaintance with the
+little pair gave me a new and tender interest in all of their name I
+might know in future.
+
+While watching the lazulis from the sycamores, on looking up on a level
+with Billy's ears, I discovered a snug canopied nest held by a jointed
+branch of the twisted tree, as in the palm of your hand. It was as if
+the old sycamore were protecting the little brood, holding it secure
+from all dangers. Looking at the nest, I spied a brown tail resting
+against the limb, and then a small brown head was raised to look at me
+from between the leaves. It was the little bird whose sweet home-like
+song had so cheered my heart in this far-away land, the home song
+sparrow, dearer than all the birds of California. It was such a pleasure
+to find her that I sat in the saddle and talked to the pretty bird while
+she brooded her eggs under the green leaves.
+
+The next time we went down to the sycamore the bird was away, and it
+seemed as if the tree had been deserted. It was empty and uninteresting.
+Again I came, and this time the father song sparrow sang blithely in
+the old tree, while his gentle mate went about looking for food for her
+brood. Her little birds had come! How happy and full of business she
+seemed! She ran nimbly over the ground, weaving in and out between the
+stalks of the oats and the yellow mustard, as if there were paths in her
+forest. When she had to run across the sand bed, out in open sight, she
+put up her tail, held her wings tight at her sides, and scudded across.
+Then with the sunlight through the leaves dappling her back, she ran
+around the foot of the sycamore. She had something in her bill, and with
+a happy chirp was off to her brood.
+
+There was another family abroad on our beat. When riding past the little
+lover's, I heard voices of young birds beyond, and rode out to the oak
+in the middle of the field from which they came, to see who it was. It
+was a surprise to find a family of full-fledged blue jays--a surprise,
+because the jays had been terrorizing the small birds of the
+neighborhood till it seemed strange to think they had any family life
+themselves. I had come to feel that they were great hobgoblins going
+about seeking whom they could devour; but such harsh judgments are
+usually false, whether of birds or beasts, and I was convinced against
+my will on hearing the tender tone in which the old jays called to their
+young.
+
+To be sure, they were imperative in their commands. As I rode, around
+the tree, one of them looked at me sharply and proceeded to take
+measures to protect his brood. When one of the children told me where he
+was, his parent promptly flew over and shouted in his ear, "Be quiet!"
+with such a ring of command that an unbroken hush followed. Moreover,
+when one child, probably a greedy one, teased for food, its parent ran
+down the branch to drive it off; and in some way best known to
+themselves the old birds hushed up the boisterous young ones and
+spirited them out of my sight. But all these things were in line with
+good family government and the best interests of the children, and were
+more than atoned for by the soft gentle notes the old birds used when
+they were leading around their cherished brood out of harm's way.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+AROUND OUR RANCH-HOUSE.
+
+
+CLOSE up under the hills, the old vine-covered ranch-house stood within
+a circle of great spreading live oaks. The trees were full of noisy,
+active blackbirds--Brewer's blackbirds, relatives of the rusty that we
+know in New York. The ranchman told me that they always came up the
+valley from the vineyard to begin gathering straws for their nests on
+his brother's birthday, the twenty-fifth of March. After that time it
+was well for passers below to beware. If an unwary cat, or even a hen or
+turkey gobbler, chanced under the blackbirds' tree, half a dozen birds
+would dive down at it, screaming and scolding till the intruders beat an
+humble retreat. But the blackbirds were not always the aggressors. I
+heard a great outcry from them one day, and ran out to find them
+collecting at the tree in front of the house. A moment later a hawk flew
+off with a young nestling, and was followed by an angry black mob.
+
+One pair of the blackbirds nested in the oak by the side of the house,
+over the hammock. Though making themselves so perfectly at home on the
+premises, driving off the ranchman's cats and gobblers, and drinking
+from his watering-trough, if they were taken at close quarters, with
+young in their nests, the noisy birds were astonishingly timid. One
+could hardly understand it in them.
+
+One afternoon I sat down under the tree to watch them. Mountain Billy
+rested his bridle on my knee, and the ranchman's dog came out to join
+us; but the mother blackbird, though she came with food in her bill and
+started to walk down the branch over our heads, stopped short of the
+nest when her eye fell on us. She shook her tail and called _chack_, and
+her mate, who sat near, opened wide his bill and whistled _chee_. The
+small birds were hungry and grew impatient, seeing no cause for delay,
+so raised their three fuzzy heads above the edge of the nest and sent
+imperative calls out of their three empty throats. As the parents did
+not answer the summons, the young dozed off again, but when the old ones
+did get courage to light near the nest there was such a rousing chorus
+that they flew off alarmed for the safety of their clamorous brood.
+After that outbreak, it seemed as if the mother bird would never go back
+to her children; but finally she came to the tree and, after edging
+along falteringly, lit on a branch above them. The instant she touched
+foot, however, she was seized with nervous qualms and turned round and
+round, spreading her tail fan-fashion, as if distracted.
+
+To my surprise, it was the father bird who first went to the nest,
+though he had the wit to go to it from the outside of the tree, where he
+was less exposed to my dangerous glance. I wondered whether it was
+mother love that kept her from the nest when he ventured, or merely a
+case of masculine common-sense versus nerves. How birds could imagine
+more harm would be done by going to the nest than by making such a fuss
+five feet away from it was a poser to me. Perhaps they attribute the
+same intelligence to us that some of us do to them!
+
+While the blackbirds were making such a time over our heads, I watched
+the hummingbirds buzzing around the petunias and pink roses under the
+ranch-house windows, and darting off to flutter about the tubular
+flowers of the tobacco-tree by the well. One day the small boy of the
+family climbed up to the hummingbird's nest in the oak "to see if there
+were eggs yet," and the frightened brood popped out before his eyes. His
+sister caught one of them and brought it into the house. When she held
+it up by the open door the tiny creature spread its little wings and
+flew out into the vines over the window. The child was so afraid its
+mother would not find it she carried it back to its oak and watched till
+the mother came with food. The hummers were about the flowers in front
+of the windows so much that when the front door was left open they often
+came into the room.
+
+In an oak behind the barn I found a hummingbird's nest, and, yielding to
+temptation, took out the eggs to look at them. In putting them back one
+slipped and dropped on the hard ground, cracking the delicate pink shell
+as it fell. The egg was nearly ready to hatch, and I felt as guilty as
+if having killed a hummingbird.
+
+[Illustration: Arizona Hooded Oriole.
+
+(One half natural size.)]
+
+[Illustration: Baltimore Oriole--Eastern.
+
+(One half natural size.)]
+
+When in the hammock under the oak one day, I saw a pair of the
+odd-looking Arizona hooded orioles busily going and coming to a drooping
+branch on the edge of the tree. They had a great deal to talk about as
+they went and came, and when they had gone I found, to my great
+satisfaction, that they had begun a nest. They often use the gray
+Spanish moss, but here had found a good substitute in the orange-colored
+parasitic vine of the meadows known among the people of the valley as
+the 'love-vine' (dodder). The whole pocket was composed of it, making a
+very gaudy nest.
+
+Linnets nested in the same old tree. Indeed, it is hard to say where
+these pretty rosy house finches, cousins of our purple finches, would
+not take it into their heads to build. They nested over the front door,
+in the vines over the windows, in the oaks and about the outbuildings,
+and their happy musical songs rang around the ranch-house from morning
+till night. As I listened to their merry roundelay day after day during
+that beautiful California spring, it sounded to me as though they said,
+"_How-pretty-it-is'-out, how-pretty-it-is'-out, how-pretty-it-is'!_" The
+linnets are ardent little wooers, singing and dancing before the
+indifferent birds they would win for their mates. I once saw a rosy
+lover throw back his pretty head and hop about before his brown lady
+till she was out of patience and turned her back on him. When that had
+no effect, she opened her bill, spread her wings, and leaned toward him
+as if saying, "If you don't stop your nonsense, I'll----" But the fond
+linnets' gallantry and tenderness are not all spent in the wooing. When
+the mother bird was brooding her nest over our front door, her
+crimson-throated mate stood on the peak of the ridgepole above and sang
+blithely to her, turning his head and looking down every little while to
+make sure that she was listening to his pretty prattle.
+
+One of the birds that nested in the trees by the ranch-house was the
+bee-bird, who was soft gray above and delicate yellow below, instead of
+dark gray above and shining white below, like his eastern relative, the
+kingbird. The birds used to perch on the bare oak limbs, flycatching. It
+was interesting to watch them. They would fly obliquely into the air and
+then turn, with bills bristling with insects, and sail down on
+outstretched wings, their square tails set so that the white outer
+feathers showed to as good advantage as the white border of the
+kingbird's does in similar flights. They made a bulky untidy nest in the
+oaks by the barn, using a quantity of string borrowed from the ranchman.
+Their voices were high-keyed and shrill with an impatient emphasis, and
+at a distance suggested the shrill yelping of the coyote. _Kee'-ah,
+kee-kee' kee'-ah_, they would cry. The wolves were so often heard around
+the ranch-house that in the early morning I have sometimes mistaken the
+birds for them.
+
+One of the favorite hunting-grounds of the bee-birds was the orchard,
+where they must have done a great deal of good destroying insects. They
+were quarrelsome birds, and were often seen falling through the air
+fighting vigorously. I saw one chase a sparrow hawk and press it so hard
+that the hawk cried out lustily. The ranchman's son told me of one
+bee-bird who defended his nest with his life. Two crows lit in a tree
+where the flycatcher had a nest containing eggs. The crows had
+difficulty in getting to the tree to begin with, for the bee-birds
+fought them off; and though they lighted, were soon dislodged and chased
+down the vineyard. The man was at work there, and as the procession
+passed over his head the bee-bird dove at the crow; the crow struck back
+at him, crushing his skull, and the flycatcher dropped through the air,
+dead! The other bee-bird followed its dead mate to the ground, and then,
+without a cry, flew to a tree and let the crows go on their way.
+
+The bee-bird was one of the noisiest birds about the ranch-house, but
+commoner than he; in fact, the most abundant bird, next to the linnet
+and blackbird, was the California chewink, or, as the ranchman
+appropriately called him, the 'brown chippie;' for he does not look like
+the handsome chewink we know, but is a fat, dun brown bird with a thin
+_chip_ that he utters on all occasions. He is about the size of the
+eastern robin, and, except when nesting, almost as familiar. There were
+brown chippies in the door-yard, brown chippies around the barns, and
+brown chippies in the brush till one got tired of the sight of them.
+
+The temptations that come to conscientious observers are common to
+humanity, and one of the subtlest is to undervalue what is at hand and
+overvalue the rare or distant. Unless a bird is peculiarly interesting,
+it requires a definite effort to sit down and study him in your own
+dooryard, or where he is so common as to be an every-day matter. The
+chippies were always sitting around, scratching, or picking up seeds; or
+else quarreling among themselves. Feeling that it was my duty to watch
+them, I reasoned with myself, but they seemed so mortally dull and
+uninteresting it was hard work to give up any time to them. When they
+went to nesting, their wild instincts asserted themselves, and they hid
+away so closely I was never sure of but one of their nests, and that
+only by most cautious watching. Then for the first time they became
+interesting! To my surprise, one day I heard a brown chippie lift up his
+voice and sing. It was in a sunny grove of oaks, and though his song was
+a queer squeaky warble, it had in it a good deal of sweetness and
+contentment; for the bird seemed to find life very pleasant. The
+ranchman's son told me that up in the canyons at dusk he had sometimes
+heard towhee concerts, the birds answering each other from different
+parts of the canyon.
+
+[Illustration: California Chewink.
+
+(One half natural size.)]
+
+[Illustration: Eastern Chewink.
+
+(One half natural size.)]
+
+There was a nest in the chaparral which probably belonged to these
+chewinks. It was in a mass of poison ivy that had climbed up on a
+scrub-oak. I spent the best part of a morning waiting for the birds to
+give in their evidence. Brown sentinels were posted on high bare brush
+tops, where they chipped at me, and once a brown form flew swiftly away
+from the nest bush; but like most people whose conversation is limited
+to monosyllables, the towhees are good at keeping a secret. While
+watching for them, I heard a noise that suggested angry cats spitting at
+each other; and three jack-rabbits came racing down the
+chaparral-covered knoll. One of them shot off at a tangent while the
+other two trotted along the openings in the brush as if their trails
+were roads in a park. Then a cottontail rabbit came out on a spot of
+hard yellow earth encircled by bushes, and lying down on its side kicked
+up its heels and rolled like a horse; after which the pretty thing
+stretched itself full length on the ground to rest, showing a pink light
+in its ears. After a while it got up, scratched one ear, and with a kick
+of one little furry leg ran off in the brush. Another day, when I sat
+waiting, I saw a jack-rabbit's ears coming through the brush. He trotted
+up within a few feet, when he stopped, facing me with head and ears up;
+a noble-looking little animal, reminding me of a deer with antlers
+branching back. He stood looking at me, not knowing whether to be
+afraid or not, and turning one ear trumpet and then the other. But
+though smiling at him, I was a human being, there was no getting around
+that; and after a few undecided hops, this way and that, he ran off and
+disappeared in the brush. Near where he had been was a spot where a
+number of rabbit runways came to a centre, and around it the rabbit
+council had been sitting in a circle, their footprints proved.
+
+Brown chippies were not much commoner around the ranch-house than
+western house wrens were, but the big prosaic brown birds seemed much
+more commonplace. The wrens were strongly individual and winning
+wherever they were met. They nested in all sorts of odd nooks and
+corners about the buildings. One went so far as to take up its abode in
+the wire-screened refrigerator that stood outside the kitchen under an
+oak! Another pair stowed their nest away in an old nosebag hanging on a
+peg in the wine shed; while a third lived in one of the old grape crates
+piled up in the raisin shed.
+
+The crate nest was delightful to watch. The jolly little birds, with
+tails over their backs and wings hanging, would sing and work close
+beside me, only three or four feet away. They would look up at me with
+their frank fearless eyes and then squeeze down through their crack into
+the crate, and sit and scold inside it--such an amusing muffled little
+scold! The nest was so astonishingly large I was interested to measure
+it. Twigs were strewn loosely over one end of the box, covering a square
+nearly sixteen inches on a side. The compact high body of the nest
+measured eight by ten inches, and came so near the top of the crate that
+the birds could just creep in under the slats. Some of the twigs were
+ten inches long, regular broom handles in the bills of the short bobbing
+wrens. One of the birds once appeared with a twig as long as itself. It
+flew to the side of a beam with it, at sight of me, and stood there
+balancing the stick in its bill, in pretty fashion. Another time it flew
+to the peak of the shed to examine an old swallow's nest now occupied by
+linnets, and amused itself throwing down its neighbors' straws--the
+naughty little rogue!
+
+Such jolly songsters! They were fairly bubbling over with happiness all
+the time. They had an old stub in front of the shed that might well have
+been called the singing stub, for they kept it ringing with music when
+they were not running on inside the shed. They seemed to warble as
+easily as most birds breathe; in fact, song seemed a necessity to them.
+There was a high pole in front of the shed, and one day I found my
+ebullient little friend squatting on top to hold himself on while he
+sang out at the top of his lungs! Another time I came face to face with
+a pair when the songster was in the midst of his roundelay. He stopped
+short, bobbed nervously from side to side, and then, rising to his feet
+and putting his right foot forward with a pretty courageous gesture,
+took up his song again. When the pair were building in the crate, I
+stuck some white hen's feathers there, thinking they might like to use
+them. Mr. Troglodytes came first, and seeing them, instead of turning
+tail as I have known brave guardians of the nest to do, burst out
+singing, as if it were a huge joke. Then he hopped down on the rim of
+the box to scrutinize the plumes, after which he flew out. But he had to
+stop to sing atilt of an elder stem before he could go on to tell his
+spouse about them.
+
+One day, when riding back to the ranch, I saw half a dozen turkey
+buzzards soaring over the meadow--perhaps there was a dead jack-rabbit
+in the field. It was astonishing to see how soon the birds would
+discover small carrion from their great height. The ranchman never
+thought of burying anything, they were such good scavengers. A few hours
+after an animal was thrown out in the field the vultures would find it.
+They would stand on the body and pull it to pieces in the most revolting
+way. The ranchman told me he had seen them circle over a pair of
+fighting snakes, waiting to devour the one that was injured. They were
+grotesque birds. I often saw them walk with their wings held out at
+their sides as if cooling themselves, and the unbird-like attitude
+together with the horrid appearance of their red skinny heads made them
+seem more like harpies than before.
+
+They were most interesting at a distance. I once saw three of them
+standing like black images on a granite bowlder, on top of a hill
+overlooking the valley. After a moment they set out and went circling in
+the sky. Although they flew in a group, it seemed as if the individual
+birds respected one another's lines so as not to cover the same ground.
+Sometimes when soaring they seemed to rest on the air and let themselves
+be borne by the wind; for they wobbled from one side to the other like a
+cork on rough water.
+
+One of the most interesting birds of the valley is the road-runner or
+chaparral cock, a grayish brown bird who stands almost as high as a crow
+and has a tail as long as a magpie's. He is noted for his swiftness of
+foot. Sometimes, when we were driving over the hills, a road-runner
+would start out of the brush on a lonely part of the road and for quite
+a distance keep ahead of the horses, although they trotted freely along.
+When tired of running he would dash off into the brush, where he stopped
+himself by suddenly throwing his long tail over his back. A Texan, in
+talking of the bird, said, "It takes a right peart cur to catch one,"
+and added that when a road-runner is chased he will rise but once, for
+his main reliance is in his running, and he does not trust much to his
+short wings. The chaparral cocks nested in the cactus on our hills, and
+were said to live largely on lizards and horned toads.
+
+[Illustration: Valley Quail and Road-Runner.]
+
+It became evident that a pair of these singular birds had taken up
+quarters in the chaparral on the hillside back of the ranch-house, for
+one of them was often seen with the hens in the dooryard. One day I was
+talking to the ranchman when the road-runner appeared. He paid no
+attention to us, but went straight to the hen-house, apparently to get
+cocoons. Looking between the laths, I could see him at work. He flew up
+on the hen-roosts as if quite at home; he had been there before and knew
+the ways of the house. He even dashed into the peak of the roof and
+brought down the white cocoon balls dangling with cobweb. When he had
+finished his hunt he stood in the doorway, and a pair of blackbirds lit
+on the fence post over his head, looking down at him wonderingly. Was he
+a new kind of hen? He was almost as big as a bantam. They sat and looked
+at him, and he stood and stared at them till all three were satisfied,
+when the blackbirds flew off and the road-runner walked out by the
+kitchen to hunt among the buckets for food.
+
+These curious birds seem to be of an inquiring turn of mind, and
+sometimes their investigations end sadly. The windmills, which are a new
+thing in this dry land, naturally stimulate their curiosity. A small boy
+from the neighboring town--Escondido--told me that he had known four
+road-runners to get drowned in one tank; though he corrected himself
+afterwards by saying, "We fished out _one_ before he got drowned!"
+
+Another lad told me he had seen road-runners in the nesting season call
+for their mates on the hills. He had seen one stand on a bowlder fifteen
+feet high, and after strutting up and down the rock with his tail and
+wings hanging, stop to call, putting his bill down on the rock and going
+through contortions as if pumping out the sound. The lad thought his
+calls were answered from the brush below.
+
+In April the ranchman reported that he had seen dusky poor-wills,
+relatives of our whip-poor-wills, out flycatching on the road beyond the
+ranch-house after dark. He had seen as many as eight or nine at once,
+and they had let him come within three feet of them. Accordingly, one
+night right after tea I started out to see them. The poor-wills choose
+the most beautiful part of the twenty-four hours for their activity.
+When I went out, the sky above the dark wall of the valley was a quiet
+greenish yellow, and the rosy light was fading in the north at the head
+of the canyon. White masses of fog pushed in from the ocean. Then the
+constellations dawned and brightened till the evening star shone out in
+her full radiant beauty. Locusts and crickets droned; bats zigzagged
+overhead; and suddenly from the dusty road some black objects started
+up, fluttered low over the barley, and dropped back on the road again.
+At the same time came the call of the poor-will, which, close at hand,
+is a soft burring _poor-will, poor-wil'-low_. Two or three hours later
+I went out again. The full moon had risen, and shone down, transforming
+the landscape. The road was a narrow line between silvered fields of
+headed grain, and the granite bowlders gleamed white on the hills
+inclosing the sleeping valley. For a few moments the shrill barking of
+coyote wolves disturbed the stillness; then again the night became
+silent; peace rested upon the valley, and from far up the canyon came
+the faint, sad cry, _poor-wil'-low, poor-wil'-low_.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+POCKET MAKERS.
+
+
+THE bush-tits are cousins of the eastern chickadees, which is reason
+enough for liking them, although the California fruit growers have a
+more substantial reason in the way the birds eat the scale that injures
+the olive-trees. The bush-tits might be the little sisters of the
+chickadee family, they are so small. They look like gray balls with long
+tails attached, for they are plump fluffy tots, no bigger than your
+thumb, without their tails. One of them, when preoccupied, once came
+within three feet of where I stood. When he discovered me a comical look
+of surprise came into his yellow eyes and he went tilting off, for his
+long tail gave him a pitching flight as if he were about to go on his
+bill, a flight that reminds one of the tail that wagged the dog.
+
+[Illustration: Nest of the Bush-tit.]
+
+There were so many of the gray pocket nests in the oaks that it was hard
+to choose which to watch, but one of the most interesting hung from a
+branch of the big double oak of the gnatcatchers, above the ranch-house,
+where I could see it when sitting in the crotch of the tree. While
+watching it I looked beyond over the chaparral wall away to a dark
+purple peak standing against a sky flecked with sun-whitened clouds. The
+nest was like an oriole's, but nearly twice as long, though the builders
+were less than half the size of the orioles. Instead of being open at
+the top, it was roofed over, and the only entrance was a small round
+hole, the girth of the bird, about two inches under the roof.
+
+One might imagine that such big houses would be dark with only one small
+dormer window, and the valley children assured me that the birds hung
+living firefly lamps on their walls! I suggested that a Society for the
+Prevention of Cruelty to Fireflies would be needed if that were the
+case; but when it comes to that, what bird would choose to brood by
+gaslight?
+
+When I first saw the bush-tit in its round doorway, it suggested Jack
+Horner's famous plum, comical little ball of feathers! When first
+watching the nest the small pair put me on their list of enemies, along
+with small boys, blue jays, and owls. To go down into the pocket under
+my stare seemed a terrible thing. When one of them came with a bit of
+moss for lining, it started for the front door, saw me, stopped, and
+turned to go to the back of the nest. Then it tried to get up courage to
+approach the house from the side, got in a panic and dashed against the
+wall as if expecting a door would open for it. When at last it did make
+bold to dart into the nest it was struck with terror, and, whisking
+around, jabbed the moss into the outside wall and fled!
+
+Seeing that nothing awful happened, the birds finally took me off the
+black list and allowed me to oversee their work, as long as I gave no
+directions. Sometimes both little tots went down into the bag to work
+together; surely there was plenty of room for many such as they. But it
+is not always a matter of cubic inches, and one morning when the second
+bird was about to pop in, apparently it was advised to wait a minute.
+There was no ill feeling, though, for when the small builder came out it
+flew to the twig in front of the door, where its mate was waiting, and
+sat down beside it, a little Darby by his Joan.
+
+They worked busily. Sometimes they popped in only to pop out again; at
+other times they stayed inside as long as if they had been human
+housekeepers, hanging pictures, straightening chairs, and setting their
+bric-a-brac in order for the fortieth time; each change requiring mature
+deliberation.
+
+One morning--after the birds had been putting in lining long enough to
+have wadded half a dozen nests--if my judgment is of any value in such
+matters--I discovered that the roof was falling in; it was almost on top
+of the front door! The next day, to my dismay, the door had vanished.
+What was the trouble? Were the pretty pair young builders; was this
+their first nest, and had they paid more attention to decorating their
+house inside than to laying strong foundations; or had their pocket been
+too heavy for its frame?
+
+However it came about, the wise birds concluded that they would not
+waste time crying over spilt milk. They calmly went to work to tear the
+first nest to pieces and build a second one out of it. One of them
+tweaked out its board with such a jerk it sent the pocket swinging like
+a pendulum. But the next time it wisely planted its claw firmly to
+steady itself, while it cautiously pulled the material out with its
+bill.
+
+If the birds were inexperienced, they were bright enough to profit by
+experience. This time they hung their nest between the forks of a strong
+twig which had a cross twig to support the roof, so that the accident
+that had befallen them could not possibly occur again. They began work
+at the top, holding onto the twig with their claws and swinging
+themselves down inside to put in their material; and they moulded and
+shaped the pocket as they went along.
+
+After watching the progress of the new nest, I went to see what had
+become of the old one. It was on the ground. On taking it home and
+pulling it to pieces, I found that the wall was from half an inch to an
+inch thick, made of fine gray moss and oak blossoms. There was a thick
+wadding of feathers inside. I counted _three hundred_, and there were a
+great many more! The amount of hard labor this stood for amazed me. No
+wonder the nest pulled down, with a whole feather-bed inside! Why had
+they put it in? I asked some children, and one said, "To keep the eggs
+warm, I guess;" while the other suggested, "So the eggs wouldn't break."
+Most of the feathers were small, but there must have been several dozen
+chicken's feathers from two to three inches long. Among them was a plume
+of an owl.
+
+[Illustration: POCKET NEST IN AN OAK]
+
+Much to my surprise, in the bush-tit's nest there was a broken eggshell.
+Had the egg broken in falling, or had a snake been there? One of the
+boys of the valley told me about seeing a racer snake go into a
+bush-tit's pocket. The cries of the birds rallied several other pairs,
+and they all flew about in distress, though not one of them dared touch
+the dreadful tail that hung out of the nest hole. As the snake was about
+three feet long, the pocket bulged as it moved around inside. There were
+four nestlings about a quarter grown, and the relentless creature
+devoured them all. The boy waited below with a stick, and when it came
+out, killed it and shook it by the tail till the small birds popped out
+of its mouth. If my broken eggshell pointed to any such tragedy, it
+cleared the birds of the accusation of being poor builders.
+
+The nest, which the first day was a filmy spot in the leaves, by the
+next day had become a gray pocket over eight inches long, although I
+could still see daylight through it. In working, the birds flew to the
+top of the open bag and hopped down inside. I could see the pocket shake
+and bulge as they worked within. When they flew away to any distance,
+on their return they almost always came with their little call of
+_schrit, schrit_.
+
+This nest was so low that I used to throw myself on the sand beneath the
+tree to watch it, taking many a sunbath there, with hat drawn down till
+I could just see the nest in the pendent branches, and watch the
+changing mosaics made by the sky through the moving leaves. When resting
+on the sand the thought of rattlesnakes came to me, for the brush on
+either side was a shelter for them, and they might easily have crept up
+beside me without my hearing them.
+
+The second bush-tit's nest was shorter than the first one. Perhaps the
+builders thought the length had something to do with the fall of the
+first; or perhaps they didn't feel like collecting three hundred more
+feathers, with oak blossoms and moss to match. They first put the frame
+of the front door below the supporting cross twig, and then, as if they
+thought it needed more support, changed it and put the door above the
+twig, so that the roof could not possibly close the hole, even if it did
+fall in. The doorway was also made much larger than that of the first
+nest.
+
+After making away with the old nest, my conscience smote me. Perhaps the
+little pocket makers were not through with it, even if it was on the
+ground; so I brought a piece of it back and tied it with a grass stem to
+a twig below the nest they were at work on, to save them as much
+trouble as might be. When my bird came, her bright eyes were quick to
+espy the old nest. She looked around, bewildered, as if wondering
+whether she was really awake, and making sure that this strange looking
+affair were not her second nest, come to grief in her absence. Being
+reassured by her examination, she came back and hopped from twig to twig
+inspecting the old piece of nest. At last she caught sight of a feather.
+That, apparently, was just what she wanted. She quickly flew over,
+pulled out the white plume, and went straight to the new house with it!
+
+I was not able to watch any of my bush-tits through the season, that
+year, but five years later, when again in southern California, to my
+delight I found the tits building in almost the same tree where they had
+been before.
+
+One day an interesting brood was out in the brush, and I took notes on
+their proceedings: "A family of young were abroad this morning filling
+the leaves with their little moving forms, and the air with their
+fledgling cry of _schrit_. As nearly as I could judge, there were ten in
+the family--eight young tagging after two old birds. While I watched, a
+droll thing happened, proving that a family of eight may affect a
+parent's breakfast as well as his nerves. One of the family, which I
+took to be the father bird, had some goody in his bill, and one of the
+young, presumably, followed him for it, flying up on his twig. The old
+bird turned his back upon the little one and went on shaking the grub.
+Presently a second one flew down on the other side of him,--he was
+between two fires; they touched him on both sides. I watched with
+interest to see what he would do about it, and was much amused when he
+opened his wings and flew up over their heads out of reach! Would he
+come back to feed them after his food was properly prepared? No,--he sat
+up on the branch and ate the morsel himself! I was rather shocked by
+such a deliberate proceeding, but then it occurred to me that parent
+birds have to take a bite themselves once in a while; though of course
+their business is to feed the children!"
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+THE BIG SYCAMORE.
+
+
+BEFORE going home from my morning sessions with the little lover and
+other feathered friends, I often took a gallop at the foot of the hills
+to visit a gigantic old tree, the king of the valley. One such ride is
+especially marked in my memory. It was on one of California's most
+perfect mornings. When the sun had risen over the valley, the fog
+dissolved before it, sinking away until only small white clouds were
+left in the tender blue of the notches between the red hills; while the
+bared vault overhead had that pure, deep, satisfying color peculiar to
+fog-cleared skies; and the cool fresh air was full of exhilaration. It
+put Mountain Billy so in tune with the morning that, when I chirrupped
+to him, shaking the reins on his neck, he quickly broke into a lope and
+his ringing hoofs beat time to my song as we sped down the valley, past
+vineyards and orchards and yellow fields of ripening grain. The free
+swift motion was a delight in itself, and after days and weeks given to
+the details of nest-making, shut away from the world in our little
+remote valley at the foot of the mountains, now, when we came to a
+break in the hills and our nostrils were greeted by the cool salt breeze
+coming from the Pacific, suddenly the whole horizon broadened; the
+inclosing valley walls were overlooked; we were galloping under the high
+arching heavens in a wind blowing from far over the wide ocean.
+
+Here stood the great sycamore, with branches swaying; for the tree faced
+this break in the hills. It seemed as if the old monarch, with roots
+firmly planted, had battled for its ground; and now, as a conqueror,
+stood with arms uplifted to meet the ocean gales. I had never before
+appreciated the dignity of those straight upreared shafts, the vital
+strength of those deep grappling roots, the mighty grandeur of this old
+battle king.
+
+When one of the trunks fell, I had to hunt the sycamore over to find
+where it came from, not missing it in the massive framework that was
+left. The giant measured twenty-three feet and a half in circumference,
+three feet from the ground. Its enormous branches stretched out
+horizontally so far that, between the body of the tree and the tips that
+hung to the earth, there was a wide corridor where one could promenade
+on horseback. In fact, the tree spanned, from the tip of one branch to
+the tip of the other, one hundred and fifty-eight feet. In the
+photograph, the figure of a person is almost lost in the complicated
+network of the frame of the tree. The treetop was a grove in itself. A
+flock of blackbirds flying up into it was lost among the branches.
+
+[Illustration: THE BIG SYCAMORE]
+
+The ranchman knew the sycamore as the 'swallow tree,' because in former
+years, before the valley was settled, swallows that have since taken to
+barns built there. Between three and four hundred of them plastered
+their nests on the underside of the big limbs, about half way up the
+tree, where the bark was rough. They built so close together that the
+nests made a solid mass of mud. For several seasons, it was said, "they
+had bad luck." They began building before the rainy season was over, and
+all but a few dozen nests which were in especially protected places were
+swept away. The number of nests was so enormous that the ground was
+covered several inches deep with mud.
+
+Billy used to improve his time by nibbling barley while I watched birds
+in the sycamore corridor. We had not been there long before I discovered
+a bee's nest in the hollow of one of the trunks. The owners were busily
+flying in and out, and a pair of big bee-birds flew down from their nest
+in the treetop and saved themselves trouble by lunching at this
+convenient ground floor restaurant. As I sat on Billy, facing the nest,
+one of the pair swept down over the mouth of the hole, caught a bee and
+settled back on the branch to swallow it. This seemed to be the regular
+performance, and was kept up so continuously, even when we were
+standing close by, that if, as is supposed, the birds eat only drones,
+few but workers would be left in that hive.
+
+The flycatchers seemed well suited to the sycamore; they were birds of
+large ideas and sweeping flights. Their nest was at the top of the tree;
+probably eighty feet from the ground, but when one of them flew down,
+instead of coming a branch at a time, he would set his wings and, giving
+a loud cry,--as a child shouts when pushing off his sled at the top of a
+steep hill,--he would sail obliquely down from the treetop to the foot
+of the hillside beyond. When looking for his material he would hover
+over the field like a phœbe. Then, on returning, unlike the other
+birds who lived in the tree and used the branches as ladders, he would
+start from the ground and with labored flights climb obliquely up the
+air to the treetop. Once his material dangled a foot behind him. The
+birds seemed to enjoy these great flights.
+
+Their nest was not finished, and while one went for material, the
+other--presumably the male--guarded the nest. As there was nothing to
+guard as yet, it often seemed a matter of venting his own spleen! When
+not occupied in arranging his plumes, he would shoot down at every small
+bird that came upstairs; a cowardly proceeding, but perhaps he thought
+it necessary to keep his hand in against meeting bigger boys than he!
+When coming with material, one of the bee-birds got caught in a heavy
+rope of cobweb that dangled from the nest, and had to flutter hard to
+extricate itself. About their nests these birds seemed as home-loving as
+any others. Their domesticity quite surprised me; they had always seemed
+such harsh, scolding, aggressive birds! When one of them sat among the
+green leaves, pluming the soft sulphur yellow feathers of its breast, it
+looked so gentle and attractive that it was a shock when the familiar
+petulant screams again jarred the air. The birds often hunted from the
+fence beyond the sycamore, and flew from post to post with legs
+dangling, shaking their wings as they lit, with a shrill _kit'r'r'r'r'_.
+
+The sycamore was a regular apartment house; so many birds were moving
+among the boughs it was impossible to tell where they all lived. One day
+I found a pair of doves sitting on a sunny branch above me. The one I
+took to be the male sat perched crosswise, while his mate sat facing
+him, lengthwise of the limb. He calmly fluffed out his feathers and
+preened himself, while his meek spouse watched him. She fluttered her
+wings, teasing him to feed her, but he kept on dressing out his plumes.
+Then she edged a little closer, and almost essayed to touch his majesty
+with her pretty blue bill, but he sat with lordly composure quite
+ignoring her existence till a blackbird bustled up, when they both
+started nervously, and turning, sat demurely side by side on the limb,
+the wind tilting their long tails.
+
+A pair of bright orange orioles had a nest in the sycamore, though I
+never should have known it had I not seen them go to it to feed their
+young. It was a well shaded cradle surely, with its canopy of big green
+leaves.
+
+There were a good many hints to be had, first and last. A song sparrow
+appeared and stood on a branch with its tail perked up in a
+business-like way as if it had been feeding a brood. A wren came to the
+tree,--a mere pinch of feathers in the giant sycamore,--and though I
+lost sight of it, many a hollow up in the fourteenth story might have
+afforded a home for the pretty dear without any one's being the wiser,
+unless it were the bee-bird in the attic. A family of bush-tits flew
+about in the sycamore top, looking like pin-heads in a grove of trees. A
+black phœbe sometimes lit on the fence posts under the branches--it
+wanted to find a nesting place about the windmill in the opposite field,
+I felt sure, though a boy had told me that the bird sometimes plastered
+its nest onto the branches of the big tree itself. Besides all the rest,
+rosy linnets and blue lazuli buntings made the old tree ring with their
+musical roundelays.
+
+One day when I rode down to the sycamore, the meadow bordering it was
+full of haycocks, and a rabbit ran out from under one of them,
+frightened by the clatter of Billy's hoofs. That morning the tree was
+fairly alive with blackbirds and doves--what a deafening medley the
+blackbirds made! In the fields near the sycamore flocks of redwings went
+swinging over the tall gleaming mustard. This was a great place for
+blackbirds, for the big tree was on the edge of the one piece of marsh
+land in the valley, and they were quick to take advantage of its reeds
+for nesting places.
+
+The cienaga--as they called the swamp--was used as a pasture. It was
+pleasant to look out upon, from under the branches of the great tree. A
+group of horses stood in the shade of a cluster of oaks on the farther
+side of it, while the cows, a beautiful herd of buff and white
+Guernseys, waded through the swamp grass to drink near the sycamore, and
+the blackbirds wound in and out among them. I had been in a dry land so
+long it was hard to believe there was actual water in the marsh till I
+saw it drip from their chins and heard the sucking sound as they
+laboriously dragged their feet out of the mud--a noise that took me back
+to eastern pastures, but sounded strangely unfamiliar here in this
+rainless land. One of the pretty Guernseys with a white star in her
+forehead strayed up under the tree, and the shadows of the leaves moved
+over her as she raised her sensitive face to see who was there.
+
+The son of the ranchman who owned the dairy--the one who invited me down
+to see the play between his dog Romulus and the burrowing owl--said that
+when herding cows by the sycamore he once caught sight of a coyote wolf.
+He clapped his hands to send his dog, Romulus, after the wolf; and the
+noise frightened the wild creature so that he started to run up the hill
+across the road from the sycamore. Romulus followed hard at his heels
+till they got well up the hillside, when the coyote felt that he was on
+his own ground and turned on the dog, who fled back to his master with
+his tail between his legs. The lad, clapping his hands, set the dog on
+the coyote again, and this animated but bloodless performance was
+repeated and kept up till both were tired out, the animals chasing each
+other back and forth from the sycamore to the hillside with as much
+energy and perhaps as much courage as was displayed by that historic
+king of France who had five thousand men and--
+
+          "... marched them up a hill and then
+           He marched them down again."
+
+On one side of the sycamore was a great wall of weeds higher than my
+head when on horseback; a dense mass of yellow mustard, and fragrant
+wild celery which was covered with delicate white bloom. I saw
+blackbirds carrying material into this thicket, but as I had known of
+neighbors' horses getting bitten by rattlesnakes among the high weeds,
+did not think it worth while to wade around in it much for such common
+birds as they. But one day, seeing a pair of rare blue grosbeaks fly
+down into the tangle, I turned Billy right in after them, though holding
+his head well up in consideration of the snakes. The birds vanished, so
+we stood still to wait. Suddenly I heard a slight sound as of something
+slipping through the weeds at Billy's feet, and looking down saw a snake
+marked like a rattler; and as it slid by Billy's hoof I noticed with
+horror that the end of its tail was blunt--the harmless gopher snake
+that resembles the rattler has a tapering tail! I gazed at it
+spellbound, but in the dim light could not make out whether it had
+rattles or not. I had seen enough, however, and whipping up Billy was
+out of those weeds in a hurry. Safely outside, I looked at my little
+horse remorsefully--what if my desire to see a new nest had been the
+cause of his getting a rattlesnake bite!
+
+The next day when I went down to the sycamore a German was mowing there
+with a pair of mules. He was a typical Rhinelander, with blue eyes and
+long curling hair and beard, and as he drove he sang in a deep rich
+voice one of the beautiful melodies of his fatherland. Screened by the
+branches, I listened quite unmindful of my work till my reverie was
+interrupted by the man's giving a harsh cry to his mules. It was only an
+aside, however, for he dropped back into his song in the same rich
+sympathetic voice.
+
+In riding out from the tree on my way home, I saw that he was mowing
+just where the snake had been, and warned him to be careful lest the
+horses get bitten. At the word rattlesnake his blue eyes dilated, and he
+assured me that he would be on his guard. Seeing my glasses and
+note-book, he asked if I were studying birds. When told that I was, from
+his seat on the mowing-machine he took off his hat and bowed with the
+air of a lord, saying in broken English, "I am pleased to meet you!"--a
+pleasant tribute to the profession. A few days later, on meeting him, he
+asked if I had found the rattlesnake--he had killed it under the
+sycamore and hung it on a branch for me to see.
+
+As the memory of my morning rides down to the sycamore brings to mind
+the wonderful freshness of California's fog-cleared skies, so my sunset
+rides home from the great tree recall the peacefulness of the quiet
+valley at twilight. One sunset stands out with peculiar distinctness. As
+Mountain Billy turned from the sycamore marsh its leaning blades gleamed
+in the evening light, and the sun warmed the sides of the line of buff
+Guernseys wading in procession through the high swamp grass to their
+out-door milking stand. Beyond, a load of hay was crossing the meadows
+with sun on the reins and the pitchforks the men carried over their
+shoulders; and beyond, at the head of the valley, the western canyons
+were filled with golden haze, while the last shafts of yellow light
+loitered over the apricot orchards below, where the tranquil birds were
+singing their evening songs. Slowly the long shadows of the mountain
+crept over orchard and vineyard until, finally, the sun rounded the last
+peak and left our little valley in darkness.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+AMONG MY TENANTS.
+
+
+THE first year I was in California the thought of the orchards that were
+to be set out on my ranch appealed to me much less than what the place
+already possessed. As an inheritance from the stream that came down in
+spring through the Ughland canyon--past the homes of the little lover,
+the gnatcatchers, the little prisoners, and the lazulis and blue
+jays--there was a straggling line of old sycamores, full of birds'
+nests; and a patch of weeds, wild mustard, and willows, which was a
+capital shelter for wandering warblers; and a bright sunny spot always
+ringing with songs.
+
+So many houses were being put up without so much as a by-your-leave that
+it was high time for an ornithological landlady to bestir herself and
+look to her ornithological squatters; so, day after day I turned my
+horse toward the ranch and spent the morning getting acquainted with my
+tenants, riding along the shady line and making friendly calls at each
+tree.
+
+Half of the blackbirds who worked in the vineyard must have been
+beholden to me for rent, I should judge by the jolly choruses of the
+sable hordes moving about my treetops. There was a bee's nest in one of
+the sycamores, and one day the buzzing mob 'took after me' so madly that
+I had to whip up Canello and beat about with my hat to get clear of
+them.
+
+[Illustration: ALONG THE LINE OF SYCAMORES]
+
+Another day, when we stopped under a sycamore, such a loud shrill
+whistle sounded suddenly overhead that the horse started. A big bird in
+black sat with feathers bristled up about him like a threatening raven,
+croaking away sepulchrally directly overhead, bending down gazing at us
+out of his yellow eyes as if to see how we took it. It was a laughable
+sight. Blackbirds seem such human, humorous birds one can almost fancy
+them playing such pranks just for the fun of it.
+
+The blackbird colony was a busy one nesting-time. The builders would fly
+down to the road to get material, stepping along quickly, looking from
+side to side with an alert, business-like air, as if they knew just what
+they wanted. Some of them used the button-balls to line their nests.
+
+A pair had built in one of the round mats of mistletoe at the end of a
+branch, and while looking at the nest one day I was amazed to see a
+butcherbird come flying in a straight line toward it. He did not reach
+his destination, for while still in air both blackbirds darted down at
+him and drove him back faster than he had come. The guardian of the nest
+escorted him almost home, and when the victorious pair were returning
+they were joined by a noisy band of indignant members of the blackbird
+clan.
+
+I watched this attack with great interest, not knowing that shrikes were
+concerned in blackbird matters, and also because it was welcome news
+that one of these strange characters had rented a lot of me. I made a
+note of the direction my outlaw tenant took when driven ignominiously
+home, and at my earliest convenience called. Such cruel tales are told
+of his cold-blooded way of impaling birds and beasts upon thorns and
+barbed wires that one naturally looks upon him as a monster; but I found
+that he, like many another villain, turns a gentle face to his nest.
+
+He had pitched his tent on the farthest outpost of my ranch in a little
+bunch of willows, weeds, and mustard--long since converted into a
+well-kept prune orchard. The nest, which was a big round mass of sticks,
+was inside the willows in a clump of dry stalks about six feet from the
+ground. I had hardly found it before one of the builders swooped down to
+it right before my eyes, with the hardihood of one who fears no man;
+though it must be acknowledged that the shrikes, like other birds on the
+ranch, were so used to grazing horses they quite naturally took me for a
+cattle herder.
+
+In this case Canello did not act as my ally. He had been quiet and
+docile most of the morning, but now was hungry and saw some grass he
+was bent on having, so took the bit in his teeth and made such an
+obstinate fight that, before I had conquered him, the shrikes had left
+the premises and my call was finished without my hosts.
+
+On my next visit Canello behaved in more seemly manner, and permitted me
+to see something of the ways of the maligned birds. You would not have
+known them from any one else except for the remarkable stillness of
+their neighborhood. Some finches flew overhead as if meaning to stop,
+but saw the shrike and went on. I could hear the merry songs of the
+assembly down in the sycamores, but not a bird lit while we were
+there--the shrikes certainly have a bad name among their neighbors. They
+had a proud bearing and an imperative manner, but seemed so gentle and
+human in their domestic life that my prejudices were softened, as one's
+generally are by near acquaintance, and I became really very fond of my
+handsome tenants.
+
+It looked as if the shrike fed his mate. At any rate, they worked
+together and rested together, perching in lordly fashion high on the
+willows overlooking their home. They did not object to observers when at
+work. One day, when Canello's nose appeared by the nest, the builder
+looked at him over her shoulder and then quietly slid off the nest,
+flying up on her perch to wait till he should leave. It was a temptation
+to keep her waiting some time, for the shrike's corner was a pleasant
+place to linger in. The sea-breeze was so strong it turned the willow
+leaves white side out, and the beautiful glistening mustard grew so high
+there that when Canello walked into it, the golden blossoms waved over
+our heads. We haunted the premises till the birds had finished their
+framework, put in a lining of snow-white plant cotton, and had laid four
+eggs.
+
+But when getting to feel like an old friend of the family, on riding
+down one day I found the nest lying in the dust of the road broken and
+despoiled. It made me as unhappy as if the outlaws had been
+unimpeachable bird citizens--which comes of knowing both sides of a
+person's character! Do birds hand down traditions of ill luck? However
+it may be, five years later I found the nest of a pair in a dark mat of
+mistletoe at the end of a high oak branch, which was a much safer place
+than the low willow.
+
+While I was watching the first shrike family, Canello had two scares.
+Once when we were standing still by the willow we heard what sounded
+like a rattlesnake springing its rattle. The nervous horse pricked up
+his ears, raised his head, and looked in the grass as if he saw snakes,
+and though I succeeded in quieting him, when we went home he started at
+every stick and was ready to shy at every shadow. Another morning he saw
+a Mexican riding along by the vineyard, a man with a very dark face and
+a red shirt. Canello acted much as he had when hearing the rattlesnake,
+and did not quiet down till horse and rider were out of sight. The
+ranchman told me he had been cruelly treated by the Mexican who broke
+him, so perhaps it was another case of association of ideas.
+
+East of the willows, and separated from them by the dark green mallows
+and bright yellow California forget-me-nots, was the sycamore where the
+shrike was driven off by the blackbirds. Here a little brown wren had
+taken up her abode. The nest was in a dead limb with a lengthwise slit,
+and a scoop at the end like an apple-corer, so when one of the wrens
+flew down its hole with a stick, the twig stuck out of the crack as she
+ran along with it. She quite won my heart by her frank way of meeting
+her landlady. Instead of flying off, she looked me over and then quietly
+sat down in her doorway to wait for her mate.
+
+On the road to my sycamores was a deserted whitewashed adobe. The place
+had become overgrown with weeds, vines, and bushes, and was taken
+possession of by squirrels and birds. Nature had reclaimed it, covering
+its ugly scars with garlands, and making it bloom under her tender
+touch. One morning, as I rode by, a black phœbe was perched on the
+old adobe chimney of the little house, while his mate sat on the board
+that covered the well, in a way that made it easy to jump to a
+conclusion. When she flew up to the acacia beside the well and looked
+down anxiously, I put the pair on my calling list. It did not take many
+visits to prove my conclusion--there was a nest down in the well with
+white eggs in it. The phœbes were most trustful birds, and not only
+let Canello tramp around their yard, but when a pump was put down the
+well, and water pumped up day by day, the brave parents, instead of
+deserting their eggs, went on brooding as if nothing had happened.
+
+[Illustration: Black Phœbe.
+
+(One half natural size.)]
+
+[Illustration: Eastern Phœbe.
+
+(One half natural size.)]
+
+Five years later, on going back to the ranch, I found the phœbes
+around the old place, but hunted in vain for the nest. A schoolhouse had
+been built in the interval, near the old adobe, and the birds perched on
+its gables, on the hitching posts in front of it, and on my prune-trees,
+that had taken the place of the willows, across the road. They even came
+up to my small ranch-house and filled me with delightful anticipations
+by inspecting the beams of the piazza; but they could not find what they
+wanted and flew off to build elsewhere. Later in the season, a neighbor
+whose ranch was opposite mine showed me a phœbe's nest inside his
+whitewashed chicken house. It was a mud pocket like a swallow's, made of
+large pellets of mud plastered against a board in the peak of the house.
+Of course I could never prove that these birds were my old friends, but
+it seemed very probable.
+
+The smallest of my tenants was a hummingbird. I saw it fly into a low
+spray, and it stayed there so long that when it left I rode up to look,
+and found that it was building on the tip of a twig under a sycamore
+leaf umbrella, one whose veining showed against the light. By rising in
+the saddle I could just reach the twig and pull it down to look inside
+the nest; but afterwards I found so many other hummers who could be
+watched with fewer gymnastics, I rested content with knowing that this
+little friend was there.
+
+One morning, when on the way to the sycamores, I found an oriole's nest
+high in a tree. Canello was hungry, but when permitted to eat barley
+under the branches kept reasonably quiet. There were two species of
+orioles in the valley; and not knowing to which the nest belonged, I
+prepared to wait for the return of the owner. The heat was so oppressive
+that I took off my hat, and a bird flew into the tree with bill open,
+gasping. After my hot ride down the valley the shade of the big tree was
+very grateful; and the cool trade wind coming through a gap in the
+hills most refreshing.
+
+Suddenly there was a flash--we all waked up--was that the house owner?
+What a remarkable bird! and what a display of color!--it had a red head,
+fiery in the sun; a black back, and a vivid yellow breast. On looking it
+up in Ridgway the stranger proved to be the Louisiana tanager, a high
+mountain bird. That was a red letter day for me. No one can know,
+without experiencing it, the delight of such discoveries. The pleasure
+is as genuine as if the world were made anew for you. In the excitement
+the oriole's nest was neglected; but ordinarily the rare unknown birds
+did not detract from the enjoyment of the old, more familiar ones.
+
+So when the brilliant stranger flew away and was seen no more I turned
+with pleasure to the pair of sparrow hawks who had come to live on the
+ranch. A branch had fallen from one of the trees, and the hawks found
+its hollow just suited to their needs. It was a good, spacious house,
+but a pair of their cousins who had built in a tree over the whitewashed
+hovel had made a sad mistake in choosing their dwelling--for the front
+door was so small they could hardly enter! I used to stop to watch them,
+and was very much amused at their efforts to make the best of it.
+
+Canello could stand up to his knees in alfilaree clover under their
+tree, so he allowed me to watch the birds in peace. The first day the
+male sparrow hawk flew to the tree with what looked like a snake
+dangling from his bill, and as he alighted screamed _kit-kit'ar'r'r'r'_,
+spreading his wings and shaking them with emphasis. When this
+brought no response, he flew from branch to branch, crying out lustily.
+He revolved around the end of a broken limb in whose small hollow was
+framed the head of Madame Falco. From her height she looked like a rag
+doll at her window. Her funny round face, which filled the doorway, had
+black spots for bill and eyes, and dark lines down the cheeks that might
+have simulated rag doll tattooing.
+
+Evidently there was some reason why she did not want to come to
+breakfast. Once she started to turn back into the nest, but at last
+laboriously wedged her way out of the hole and flew to a branch. Her
+mate was at her side in an instant, and handed her the snake. She took
+it greedily and flew off with it, let us hope because she was afraid of
+me, not because she did not want to divide with him, or thought he would
+ask her to, after all his devotion and patience!
+
+When the bird went back to her nest, her hesitation about leaving it was
+explained. For a long time she sat on a limb near by with tail bobbing,
+apparently trying to make up her mind to go in. When she did fly up at
+the hole she could not get in, and half fell down. After this failure
+she sat down on a branch, her tail tilting as violently as a pipit's,
+and when Canello moved around too much, took the excuse and flew off.
+Her mate came back with her, but when he saw us, he screamed and flew
+away, leaving her to her fate.
+
+She sat looking at her hole a long time before she tried it again, and
+when she did try, failed. It was not till her fourth attempt that she
+succeeded. The hole was very much too small for her, and the surface of
+the branch below it was so smooth and slippery that it gave her nothing
+to hold to in trying to wedge herself in. She would fly against the hole
+and attempt to hook her bill over the edge, and so draw herself up, but
+her shoulders were too big for the space. She tried to make them smaller
+by drawing down her wings lengthwise. Once, in her efforts, she spread
+her tail like a fan. After her third struggle, she sat for a long time
+smoothing her ruffled feathers, shaking herself, scratching her face
+with her foot and trying to get her plumes in order.
+
+While making her toilet she apparently thought of a new plan. She went
+back to the hole and, raising her claw, fastened it inside the hole and
+with a spasmodic effort wedged in her body and disappeared down the
+black hollow. Her mate came a moment after, but she did not even appear
+in the doorway when he called. Again he came, crying _keek' keek'
+kick-er' r' r'_, in tender falsetto; but it was no use. Madame Falco had
+had altogether too hard a time getting in, to go out again in a hurry.
+He held a worm in his bill till he was tired, changed it to his claw,
+letting it dangle from that for a while; and then, as she would make no
+sign, finally flew off.
+
+The next day we had another session with the sparrow hawk. She had
+evidently profited by experience. She did not fly at the hole in the
+violent way she had done the day before, but ambled along a limb to get
+as close to it as possible, and then quietly flew up. She made two or
+three unsuccessful attempts to enter, but kept at the branch,--falling
+back but once. She got half way in once or twice, but could not force
+her wings through. She acted as if determined not to give up, and at
+last, when she found herself falling backwards, with a desperate effort
+drew herself in.
+
+There was another sparrow hawk family across the road from my ranch. In
+riding by one day, I saw a youngster looking out from the nest hole with
+big frightened eyes. Was it the only child, or was it monopolizing the
+fresh air while its brothers were smothering below? Another day there
+were two heads in the window; one was the round domed, top of a fluffy
+nestling whose eyes expressed only vague fear; but the other was the
+strongly marked head of an old sparrow hawk, who eyed us with keen
+intelligence. As I stared up, the young one drew back into the hole
+behind its parent, probably in obedience to her command; and the old
+bird bent such an anxious inquiring gaze upon me that I took the hint
+and rode away to save the poor mother worry.
+
+These were not the only hawks of the valley. Once, seeing one of the
+large Buteos winging its way with nesting sticks hanging from its claws,
+I turned Canello into the field after it, following till it lit in the
+top of a high sycamore. The pair were both gathering material. Sometimes
+they flew with the twigs in their claws; sometimes in their bills; now
+they would fly directly to the nest, again circle around the tree before
+alighting. When one was at work, the other sometimes flew up and soared
+so high in the sky he looked no larger than a sparrow hawk. In swooping
+to the ground suddenly, the hawks would hollow in their backs, stick up
+their tails, drop their legs for ballast, and so let themselves come to
+earth. While one of the birds was peacefully gathering sticks, two
+blackbirds attacked it, apparently on general grounds, because it
+belonged to a family that had been traduced since history began. To tell
+the honest truth, I trembled a little myself at thought of what might
+happen to some of my small tenants, though I reassured myself by
+remembering that the facts prove the maligned hawks much more likely to
+eat gophers than birds.
+
+In the back of the stub occupied by one of the sparrow hawks it was a
+pleasure to find a flicker excavating its nest. Planting its claws
+firmly in the hole with tail braced against the bark, the bird leaned
+forward, thrusting its head in, over and again, as if feeding young. It
+used its feet as a pivot, and swung itself in, farther and farther, as
+it worked. Such gymnastics took strong feet, for the bird raised itself
+by them each time. It worked like an automatic toy wound up for the
+performance. When tired, the flicker hopped up on a branch and vented
+its feelings by shouting _if-if-if-if-if-if-if_, after which it quietly
+returned to work. The wood was so soft that the excavating made almost
+no noise, but it was easy to see what was going on, for the carpenter
+simply drew back its head and tossed out the glistening chips for all
+the world to see. At the end of a week the flicker was working so far
+down in its excavation that only the tip of its tail stuck out of the
+door.
+
+The nest of another Colaptes, I found by accident--a fresh chip dropped
+from mid-air upon my riding skirt. Just then Canello gave a stentorian
+sneeze and the bird came to her window to look down. She did not object
+to us, and was loath to turn back inside the dark hole--such a close
+stuffy place--when outside there were the rich green leaves of the tree,
+the sweet breath of the hayfield and the gentle breeze just springing
+up; all the warmth and sunshine and fragrance of the fields. How could
+she ever leave to go below? Perhaps she bethought her that soon the dark
+hole would be a home ringing with the voices of her little ones; at all
+events, she quickly turned and disappeared in her nest.
+
+At the foot of the ranch I discovered a comical, sleepy little brown
+owl, dozing in a sycamore window. When we waked it up, it went backing
+down the hole. I wondered if it kept awake all day without food, for
+surely owl children do not get many meals by daylight. I spoke to the
+ranchman's son about it, and he said he thought the old birds fed the
+young too much, that he had found about a dozen small kangaroo rats and
+mice in their holes! He told me that he had known old owls to change
+places in the daytime, and both birds to stay in the hole during the
+day. Down the valley, where an old well was only partly covered over, at
+different times he had found a number of drowned owls. They seemed to
+fly into any dark hole that offered. Three barn owls had been taken from
+a windmill tank in the neighborhood in about a month. In a mine at
+Escondido the man had found a number of owls sitting in a crevice where
+the earth, had caved; and he had seen about a dozen of them fifty to a
+hundred feet underground, at the bottom of the mine shaft.
+
+I did not wonder the birds wanted to keep out of sight in the daytime,
+knowing what happened to those that stayed out. A pair nested in the top
+of a high sycamore on my neighbors' premises, and when one stirred away
+from home, it did so to its sorrow. One morning there was such a
+commotion I rode down to see what was the matter. A big dark brown form
+flew down the avenue of sycamores ahead of us, followed by a mob of all
+the feathered house owners in the neighborhood. They escorted it home to
+the top of its own tree, where it seated itself on a limb, its big
+yellow eyes staring and its long ears dropped down, as if home were not
+home with a rout of angry bee-birds and blackbirds screeching and diving
+at you over your own doorsill. Two orioles started to fly over from the
+next tree, but went back, perhaps thinking it wiser not to make open war
+upon such near neighbors; while a sparrow hawk who came to help in the
+attack was judged too dangerous an ally and escorted home by a squad of
+blackbirds dispatched for the purpose. The poor persecuted owl screwed
+its head around to its back as if hoping to see pleasanter sights on
+that side; but the uncanny performance did not seem to please its
+enemies, and a blackbird flew rudely past, close under its bill, as if
+to warn it of what might happen.
+
+The queerest of all my tenants was an old mother barn owl who lived in
+the black charred chimney of one of the sycamores. I found a white
+feather on the black wood one day in riding by, and pulling Canello up
+by the tree, broke off a twig and rapped on the door. She came
+blundering out and flew to a limb over our heads--such a queer old
+crone, with her hooked nose and her weazened face surrounded by a
+circlet of dark feathers. The light blinded her, and with her big round
+eyes wide open she leaned down staring to make out who we were. Then
+shaking her head reproachfully, she swayed solemnly from side to side.
+As the wind blew against her ragged feathers she drew her wings over her
+breast like a cloak, making herself look like a poverty-stricken
+wiseacre. Finding that we did not offer to go, the poor old crone took
+to her wings; but as she passed down the line of sycamores she roused
+the blackbird clan, and a pair of angry orioles flew out and attacked
+her. My conscience smote me for driving her out among her enemies, but
+on our return to the sycamores all was quiet again, and a lizard was
+sunning himself on the edge of the old owl's chimney.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+AN UNNAMED BIRD.
+
+
+SIX years ago, on my first visit to California, I found a dainty cup of
+a nest out in the oaks, but the name of its owner was a puzzle. On
+returning East I consulted those who are wisest in matters of such fine
+china, but they were unable to clear up the matter. For five years that
+mystery haunted me. At the end of that time, when back in California, up
+in those same oaks, I found another cup of the same pattern; but the cup
+got broken and that was the end of it.
+
+The fact of the matter is, you can identify perhaps ninety per cent. of
+the birds you see, with an opera-glass and--patience; but when it comes
+to the other ten per cent., including small vireos and flycatchers, and
+some others that might be mentioned, you are involved in perplexities
+that torment your mind and make you meditate murder; for it is
+impossible to
+
+          Name _all_ the birds without a gun.
+
+On bringing my riddle to the wise men, they shook their heads and asked
+why I did not shoot my bird and find out who he was. On saying the word
+his skin would be sent to me; but after knowing the little family in
+their home it would have been like raising my hand against familiar
+friends. Could I take their lives to gratify my curiosity about a name?
+I pondered long and weighed the matter well, trying to harden my heart;
+but the image of the winning trustful birds always rose before me and
+made it impossible. I will put the case before you, and you can judge if
+you would not have withheld your hand.
+
+One day, hearing the sound of battle up in the treetops, I hurried over
+to the scene of action, when out dashed a pair of courageous little
+dull-colored birds in hot pursuit of a blue jay, whom they dove at till
+they drove him from the field. My sympathies were enlisted at once.
+Fearless little tots to brave a bird four times as big as themselves in
+defense of their home! How hard to have to build and rear a brood in the
+face of such a powerful foe! I wanted to take up the cudgels for them
+and stand guard to see that no harm came.
+
+Planting my camp-stool under their oak, I watched eagerly to have my new
+friends show me their home. As I waited, a pair of turtle doves walked
+about on the sand under the farther branches of the tree; a pair of
+woodpeckers sat on a dead limb lying in wait for their prey; and a
+couple of titmice came hunting through the oak--all the world seemed
+full of happy home-makers.
+
+But soon I saw a sight that made me forget everything else. There were
+my brave little birds up in the oak working upon a beautiful moss cup
+that hung from a forked twig. They were building together, flying
+rapidly back and forth bringing bits of moss from the brush to put in
+their nest.
+
+They worked independently, each hunting moss and placing it to its own
+satisfaction. What one did the other would be well pleased with, I felt
+sure. But while each worked according to its own ideas, they always
+appeared to be working together; they could not bear to be out of sight
+of each other long at a time. When the small father bird found himself
+at the nest alone, after placing his material he would stand and call to
+let his pretty mate know that he was waiting for her; or else sit down
+by the nest and warble over such a contented, happy little lay it warmed
+my heart just to listen to him.
+
+When his mate appeared the merry birds would chase off for a race
+through the treetops. Song and play were mingled with their work, but,
+for all that, the happy builders' house grew under their hands, and they
+kept faithfully at their task of preparing the home for their little
+brood. Once the small, dainty mother bird,--surely it must have been
+she,--after putting in her bit of moss, settled down in the nest and
+sat there the picture of quiet happiness.
+
+This was all I saw of the nest builders that year. A great storm swept
+through the valley, and it must have washed away the frail mossy cup,
+for it was gone and the tree was deserted. Nevertheless, the birds had
+been so attractive, and their nest so interesting, that through the five
+years that passed before my return to California I kept their memory
+green, and could never think of them without tenderness--though I could
+call them by no name. If they had only worn red feathers in their caps,
+it would have been some clue to their coats-of-arms; but, out of hand,
+there seemed to be nothing to mark the plain, little, greenish gray
+birds from half a dozen of their cousins.
+
+When I finally returned to the California ranch, one of my first
+thoughts was for the moss nest makers up in the oaks. Now I had a chance
+to solve the mystery without harming one of their pretty feathers, for
+by long and patient watching I might get near enough to puzzle out the
+'spurious primary' and the subtle distinctions of tint that make such a
+difference in calling birds by their right names.
+
+For six weeks I watched and listened in vain, but one day when riding up
+the canyon rejoicing at the new life that filled the trees, I stopped
+under an oak only a few rods from the one where the nest had been five
+years before, and looking up saw a small dull-colored bird with a bit of
+moss in its bill walking down into a mossy cup right before my eyes! For
+a few moments I was the happiest observer in the land. I had found my
+little friend again, after all these years! It looked over the edge of
+the twig at me several times, but went on gathering material as
+unconcernedly as if it, too, remembered me. The mossy cup seemed
+prettier than any rare bit of Sèvres china, for I looked upon it with
+eyes that had been waiting for the sight for five years.
+
+As the bird worked, a cottontail rabbit rustled the leaves, and Billy
+started forward, frightening the timid animal so that it scampered off
+over the ground, showing the white underside of its tail. But though
+Billy and the rabbit were both terrified, the brave worker only flew
+down to a twig to look at them, and turned back calmly to its task.
+
+The nest was so protectively colored that I could not see it readily,
+and sometimes started to find that I had been looking right at it
+without knowing it. The prospect of identifying my birds was not
+encouraging. You might as well expect to see from the first floor what
+was going on up in a cupola as to expect to see from the ground what
+birds are doing up in the thick oak tops. You have reason to be thankful
+for even a glimpse of a bird in the heavy foliage, and as for 'spurious
+primaries,'--"Woe worth the chase!"
+
+Now and then I got a hint of family matters. My two little friends were
+working together, and occasionally I saw a bit of moss put in; but it
+was evident that the main part of the work was over. One day I waited
+half an hour, and when the bird came it acted as if it had really done
+all that was necessary, and only returned for the sake of being about
+its pretty home.
+
+The birds said a good deal up in the oak, sometimes in sweet lisping
+tones, as though talking to themselves about the nest. They often flew
+away from it not far over my head. The call note was a loud
+whistle--_whee-it'_--and the bird gave it so rapidly that I once took
+out my watch to time him, after which he called seventy times in sixty
+seconds. Often after whistling loudly he would give a soft low call. His
+clear ringing voice was one of the most cheering in the valley.
+
+When the building seemed done and I was looking forward to the brooding,
+as the birds would then, perforce, be more about the nest, one sad
+morning I rode up through the oaks and found the beautiful moss cup torn
+and dangling from its branch. It was the keenest disappointment of the
+nesting season, and there had been many. The pretty acquaintance to
+whose renewal I had looked forward so many years was now ended.
+
+Again I had to leave California without being able to name my winning
+little friends. If I had been too much interested in them before to set
+a price on their heads; now, rather than raise my voice against them,
+they should remain forever unnamed.[4]
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[4] Since this paper was written, I have consulted an authority on
+nests, who thinks that this nameless bird was probably Hutton's vireo.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+HUMMERS.
+
+
+CALIFORNIA is the land of flowers and hummingbirds. Hummingbirds are
+there the winged companions of the flowers. In the valleys the airy
+birds hover about the filmy golden mustard and the sweet-scented
+primroses; on the blooming hillsides in spring the air is filled with
+whirring wings and piping voices, as the fairy troops pass and repass at
+their mad gambols. At one moment the birds are circling methodically
+around the whorls of the blue sage; at the next, hurtling through the
+air after a distant companion. The great wild gooseberry bushes with red
+fuchsia-like flowers are like bee-hives, swarming with noisy hummers.
+The whizzing and whirring lead one to the bushes from a distance, and on
+approaching one is met by the brown spindle-like birds, darting out from
+the blooming shrubs, gleams of green, gold, and scarlet glancing from
+their gorgets.
+
+[Illustration: The Little Hummer on her Bow-Knot Nest.
+
+(From a photograph.)]
+
+The large brown hummers probably stop in the valley only on their way
+north, but the little black-chinned ones make their home there, and the
+big spreading sycamores and the great live-oaks are their nesting
+grounds. In the big oak beside the ranch-house I have seen two or three
+nests at once; and a ring of live-oaks in front of the house held a
+complement of nests. From the hammock under the oak beside the house one
+could watch the birds at their work. If the front door was left open,
+the hummers would sometimes fly inside; and as we stepped out they
+often darted away from the flowers growing under the windows.
+
+California is the place of all places to study hummingbirds. The only
+drawback is that there are always too many other birds to watch at the
+same time; but one sees enough to want to see more. I never saw a
+hummingbird courtship unless--perhaps one performance I saw was part of
+the wooing. I was sitting on Mountain Billy under the little lover's
+sycamore when a buzzing and a whirring sounded overhead. On a twig sat a
+wee green lady and before her was her lover (?), who, with the sound and
+regularity of a spindle in a machine, swung shuttling from side to side
+in an arc less than a yard long. He never turned around, or took his
+eyes off his lady's, but threw himself back at the end of his line by a
+quick spread of his tail. She sat with her eyes fixed upon him, and as
+he moved from side to side her long bill followed him in a very droll
+way. When through with his dance he looked at her intently, as if to see
+what effect his performance had had upon her. She made some remark,
+apparently not to his liking, for when he had answered he flew away. She
+called after him, but as he did not return she stretched herself and
+flew up on a twig above with an amusing air of relief.
+
+This is all I have ever seen of the courtship; but when it comes to
+nest-building, I have often been an eye-witness to that. One little
+acquaintance made a nest of yellow down and put it among the green oak
+leaves, making me think that the laws of protective coloration had no
+weight with her, but before the eggs were laid she had neatly covered
+the yellow with flakes of green lichen. I found her one day sitting in
+the sun with the top of her head as white as though she had been diving
+into the flour barrel. Here was one of the wonderful cases of 'mutual
+help' in nature. The flowers supply insects and honey to the
+hummingbirds, and they, in turn, as they fly from blossom to blossom
+probing the tubes with the long slender bills that have gradually come
+to fit the shape of the tubes, brush off the pollen of one blossom to
+carry it on to the next, so enabling the plants to perfect their flowers
+as they could not without help. It is said that, in proportion to their
+numbers, hummingbirds assist as much as insects in the work of
+cross-fertilization.
+
+Though this little hummer that I was watching let me come within a few
+feet of her, when a lizard ran under her bush she craned her neck and
+looked over her shoulder at him with surprising interest. She doubtless
+recognized him as one of her egg-eating enemies, on whose account she
+put her nest at the tip of a twig too slender to serve as a ladder.
+
+Another hummingbird who built across the way was still more
+trustful--with people. I used to sit leaning against the trunk of her
+oak and watch the nest, which was near the tip of one of the long
+swinging branches that drooped over the trail. When the tiny worker was
+at home, a yard-stick would almost measure the distance between us. As
+she sat on the nest she sometimes turned her head to look down at the
+dog lying beside me, and often hovered over us on going away.
+
+The nest was saddled on a twig and glued to a glossy dark green oak
+leaf. Like the other nest, it was made of a spongy yellow substance,
+probably down from the underside of sycamore leaves; and like it, also,
+the outside was coated with lichen and wound with cobweb. The bird was a
+rapid worker, buzzing in with her material and then buzzing off after
+more. Once I saw the cobweb hanging from her needle-like bill, and
+thought she probably had been tearing down the beautiful suspension
+bridges the spiders hang from tree to tree.
+
+It was very interesting to see her work. She would light on the rim of
+the nest, or else drop directly into the bottom of the tiny cup, and
+place her material with the end of her long bill. It looked like trying
+to sew at arm's length. She had to draw back her head in order not to
+reach beyond the nest. How much more convenient it would have been if
+her bill had been jointed! It seemed better suited to probing flower
+tubes than making nests. But then, she made nests only in spring, while
+she fed from flowers all the year round, and so could afford to stretch
+her neck a trifle one month for the sake of having a good long fly spear
+during the other eleven. The peculiar feature of her work was her
+quivering motion in moulding. When her material was placed she moulded
+her nest like a potter, twirling around against the sides, sometimes
+pressing so hard she ruffled up the feathers of her breast. She shaped
+her cup as if it were a piece of clay. To round the outside, she would
+sit on the rim and lean over, smoothing the sides with her bill, often
+with the same peculiar tremulous motion. When working on the outside, at
+times she almost lost her balance, and fluttered to keep from falling.
+To turn around in the nest, she lifted herself by whirring her wings.
+
+When she found a bit of her green lichen about to fall, she took the
+loose end in her bill and drew it over the edge of the nest, fastening
+it securely inside. She looked very wise and motherly as she sat there
+at work, preparing a home for her brood. After building rapidly she
+would take a short rest on a twig in the sun, while she plumed her
+feathers. She made nest-making seem very pleasant work.
+
+One day, wanting to experiment, I put a handful of oak blossoms on the
+nest. They covered the cup and hung down over the sides. When the small
+builder came, she hovered over it a few seconds before making up her
+mind how it got there and what she had better do about it. Then she
+calmly lit on top of it! Part of it went off as she did so, but the rest
+she appropriated, fastening in the loose ends with the cobweb she had
+brought.
+
+She often gave a little squeaky call when on the nest, as if talking to
+herself about her work. When going off for material she would dart away
+and then, as if it suddenly occurred to her that she did not know where
+she was going, would stop and stand perfectly still in the air, her
+vibrating wings sustaining her till she made up her mind, when she would
+shoot off at an angle. It seemed as if she would be worn out before
+night, but her eyes were bright and she looked vigorous enough to build
+half a dozen houses.
+
+"There's odds in folks," our great-grandmothers used to say; and there
+certainly is in bird folks; even in the ways of the same one at
+different times. Now this hummingbird was content to build right in
+front of my eyes, and the hummer down at the little lover's tree, with
+her first nest, was so indifferent to Billy and me that I took no pains
+to keep at a distance or disguise the fact that I was watching her. But
+when her nest was destroyed she suddenly grew old in the ways of the
+world, and apparently repented having trusted us. In any case, I got a
+lesson on being too prying. The first nest had not been down long before
+I found that a second one was being built only a few feet away--by the
+same bird? I imagined so. The nest was only just begun, and being
+especially interested to see how such buildings were started, I rode
+close up to watch the work. A roll of yellow sycamore down was wound
+around a twig, and the bottom of the nest--the floor--attached to the
+underside of this beam; with such a solid foundation, the walls could
+easily be supported.
+
+The small builder came when Billy and I were there. She did not welcome
+us as old friends, but sat down on her floor and looked at us--and I
+never saw her there again. Worse than that, she took away her nest,
+presumably to put it down where she thought inquisitive reporters would
+not intrude. I was disappointed and grieved, having already planned---on
+the strength of the first experience--to have the mother hummer's
+picture taken when she was feeding her young on the nest.
+
+At first I thought this suspicion reflected upon the good sense of
+hummingbirds, but after thinking it over concluded that it spoke better
+for hummingbirds than for Billy and me. If this were, as I supposed, the
+same bird who had to brood her young with Billy grazing at the end of
+her bill, and if she had been present at the unlucky moment when he got
+the oak branches tangled in the pommel of the saddle, although her
+branch was not among them, I can but admire her for moving when she
+found that the Philistines were again upon her, for her new house was
+hung at the tip of a branch that Billy might easily have swept in
+passing.
+
+These nests had all been very low, only four or five feet above the
+ground; but one day I found young in one of the common treetop nests. I
+could see it through the branches. Two little heads stuck up above the
+edge like two small Jacks-in-boxes. Billy made such a noise under the
+oak when the bird was feeding the youngsters that I took him away where
+he could not disturb the family, and tied him to an oak covered with
+poison ivy, for he was especially fond of eating it, and the poison did
+not affect him.
+
+Before the old hummer flew off, she picked up a tiny white feather that
+she found in the nest, and wound it around a twig. On her return, in the
+midst of her feeding, she darted down and set the feather flying; but,
+as it got away from her, she caught it again. The performance was
+repeated the next time she came with food; but she did it all so
+solemnly I could not tell whether she were playing or trying to get rid
+of something that annoyed her.
+
+She fed at the long intervals that are so trying to an observer, for if
+you are going to sit for hours with your eyes glued to a nest, it
+really is pleasant to have something happen once in a while! Though the
+mother bird did not go to the nest often, she sometimes flew by, and
+once the sound of her wings roused the young, and they called out to her
+as she passed. When they were awake, it was amusing to see the little
+midgets stick out their long, thread-like tongues, preen their
+pin-feathers, and stretch their wings over the nest.
+
+One fine morning when I went to the oak I heard a faint squeak, and saw
+something fluttering up in the tree. When the mother came, she buzzed
+about as though not liking the look of things, for her children were out
+of the nest, and behold!--a horse and rider were under her tree. She
+tried to coax the unruly nestlings to follow her into the upper stories,
+but they would not go.
+
+[Illustration: The Swing Nest of the Hummer.
+
+(From a Photograph.)]
+
+Although not ready to be led, one of the infants soon felt that it would
+be nice to go alone. When a bird first leaves the nest it goes about
+very gingerly, but this little fellow now began to feel his strength and
+the excitement of his freedom. He wiped his tongue on a branch, and
+then, to my astonishment, his wings began to whirl as if he were getting
+up steam, and presently they lifted him from his twig, and he went
+whirring off as softly as a hummingbird moth, among the oak sprays. His
+nerves were evidently on edge, for he looked around at the sound of
+falling leaves, started when Billy sneezed, and turned from side to
+side very apprehensively, in spite of his out-in-the-world, big-boy
+airs. He may have felt hampered by his unused wings, for, as he sat
+there waiting for his mother to come, he stroked them out with his bill
+to get them in better working order. That done, he leaned over, rounded
+his shoulders, and pecked at a leaf as if he were as much grown up as
+anybody.
+
+Of all the beautiful hummingbirds' nests I saw in California, three are
+particularly noteworthy because of their positions. One cup was set down
+on what looked like an inverted saucer, in the form of a dark green oak
+leaf wound with cobweb. That was in the oak beside the ranch-house.
+Another one was on a branch of eucalyptus, set between two leaves like
+the knot in a bow of stiff ribbon. To my great satisfaction, the
+photographer was able to induce the bird to have a sitting while she
+brooded her eggs. The third nest I imagined belonged to the bird who
+took up her floor because Billy and I looked at her. If she were, her
+fate was certainly hard, for her eggs were taken by some one, boy or
+beast. Her nest was most skillfully supported. It was fastened like the
+seat of a swing between two twigs no larger than knitting-needles, at
+the end of a long drooping branch. It was a unique pleasure to see the
+tiny bird sit in her swing and be blown by the wind. Sometimes she went
+circling about as though riding in a merry-go-round; and at others the
+wind blew so hard her round boat rose and fell like a little ship at
+sea.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+IN THE SHADE OF THE OAKS.
+
+
+THERE were half a dozen places in the valley, irrigated by the spring
+rains, where I was always sure of finding birds. Among them, on the west
+side, was the big sycamore, standing at the lower end of the valley;
+while above, in the northwest corner, was the mouth of Twin Oaks canyon
+where the migrants flocked in the brush around the large twin oak that
+overlooked the little old schoolhouse. On the east side was the Ughland
+canyon, at the mouth of which the little lover and his neighbors nested;
+while below it straggled the line of sycamores that followed the Ughland
+stream down through my ranch. But up at the head of the valley beyond
+the ranch-house was the most delightful place of all. There I was always
+sure of finding interesting nests to study.
+
+Surrounded by a waste of chaparral, it was a little oasis of great
+blooming live-oaks, and in their shade I used often to spend the hot
+afternoon hours. In the spring the water that flowed down the hills at
+the head of the valley formed a fresh mountain stream that ran down the
+Oden canyon and so on through the centre of this grove, feeding the
+oaks and spreading out to enrich the valley below. In summer, like the
+rest of the canyon streams, only its dry sandy bed remained. Then, when
+the meadows were oppressively hot, my leafy garden was a shady bower to
+linger in. Its long drooping branches hung to the ground, dainty yellow
+warblers flitted about the golden tassels of the blossoming trees, and
+the air was full of the happy songs of mated birds.
+
+[Illustration: A SHADY BOWER]
+
+The trail from the ranch-house to the oaks was a line through the low
+grass in which grew yellow fly flowers and orange poppies; and over them
+every spring, day after day, processions of migrating butterflies
+drifted slowly up the canyon. At the entrance of the garden was a
+sentinel oak whose dark green foliage contrasted well with the yellow
+flowers in the grass outside. It was the chosen hunting-ground of many
+birds. Its dead upper branches offered the bee-birds and woodpeckers an
+unobstructed view of passing insects, and gave the jays and flickers a
+chance to overlook the brush, and take their bearings. The lower limbs
+offered perches where doves might come to rest, finches to chatter, and
+chewinks to sing; while its hanging boughs and elm-like feathered sides
+attracted wandering warblers and songful wrens.
+
+The happy days spent among these beautiful California oaks are now
+far in the past, but as I sit in my study in the East and dream back
+over those hours my mind is filled with memory pictures. Sauntering
+through this oaken gallery, each tree recalls some pleasant hour--the
+sight of a new bird, the sound of a new song, the prolonged delight of
+some cozy home that I watched till accepted as a friend, when the little
+family's fears and joys were my own.
+
+That big double oak, spreading across the middle of the garden, was the
+haunted tree whose blue ghost drove away the pewees and gnatcatchers
+after they had begun to build; though the vireos and bush-tits braved it
+out, and the tiny hummer and gentle dove were not afraid to perch there.
+This was hummingbird lane--that small oak held the nest in which the two
+wee nestlings sat up like Jacks-in-the-box; these blue sage bushes
+growing in the sand were the ones the honey bees and hummers used to
+haunt, the hummers probing each lavender lip as they circled round the
+whorls; in front of this bush I saw a fairy dancer perform his airy
+minuet,--swing back and forth, and then sweep up in the air to dive
+whirring down with gorget puffed out and tail spread wide; and here,
+when watching a procession of ants, I discovered a tiny hummingbird
+building in a drooping branch that overhung the trail. That dead limb
+was the perch of a wood pewee, a silent grave bird with a sad call, who
+flew on when he was still only a lonely stranger. That oak top was made
+memorable by the sight of a flaming oriole, though he came on a cold
+foggy morning and answered my calls with a broken song and a
+half-hearted scold as he sat with his feathers ruffled up about him.
+Under the low spreading branches of that tree the chewinks used to
+scratch--I can hear the brown leaves rustle now--the branches were so
+low that, if the shy birds flew up to rest from their labors, they could
+quickly drop down and disappear in the brush.
+
+On ahead, where the garden narrows to the trail between the walls of
+brush, when I was hidden behind a screen of branches, the timid
+white-crowned sparrows used to venture out, hopping along quietly or
+stopping to sing and pick up seeds on the path. Back a few steps was the
+tree where the bush-tits came to build their second nest after the roof
+of the first one fell in; the nest which hung on such a low limb that I
+watched it from the sand beneath, looking up through the branches at the
+blue sky, the canyon walls covered with sun-whitened bowlders, and the
+turkey buzzards circling over the mountains.
+
+[Illustration: Green-tailed Chewink.
+
+(One half natural size.)]
+
+Just there, in that small open place between the trees,--how well I
+remember the afternoon,--I saw a new bird come out of the bushes; the
+green-tailed chewink he proved to be, on his way back to the Rocky
+Mountains. He was a beautiful stranger with a soft glossy coat touched
+off with yellowish green, while his high-bred gentle manners have made
+me remember him with affectionate interest all these years. Across the
+garden I heard my first song from that unique rhapsodist, the
+yellow-breasted chat. The same place marks another interesting
+experience. While I was sitting in the crotch of an oak a thrasher came
+out of the brush into an open space in front of me. Her feathers were
+disordered and apparently she had come from her nest. She walked with
+wings tight at her sides and her tail up at an angle well out of the way
+of the rustling leaves; altogether a neat alert figure that contrasted
+sharply with the lazy brown chippie which appeared just then in
+characteristic negligée, its wings hanging and tail dragging on the
+ground. The thrashers of Twin Oaks have bills that are curved like a
+sickle, and this bird used her tool most skillfully. Instead of
+scratching up the leaves and earth with her feet as chewinks and
+sparrows do, the thrasher used her bill almost exclusively. First she
+cleared a space by scraping the leaves away, moving her bill through
+them rapidly from side to side. Then she made two holes in the ground,
+probing deep with her long bill. After taking what she could get from
+the second hole, she went back to the first again, as if to see if
+anything had come to the surface there. Then she lay down on the sand to
+sun herself and acted as though going to take a sun bath, when suddenly
+she discovered me and fled.
+
+When watching the bird at work I got a pretty picture in the round disk
+of my opera-glass. The glass was focused on the digging thrasher, but a
+goldfinch came into the picture and pulled at some stems for its nest
+and a cottontail ran rapidly across from rim to rim. I lifted the glass
+to follow him and saw him go trotting down the path between the bushes.
+
+The thrasher's curved bill gives a most ludicrous look to the bird when
+singing. He looks as if he were trying to turn himself inside out. I
+once saw an adult thrasher tease its mate for food, and wondered how it
+would be possible for one curved bill to feed another curved bill; but a
+few days later I came on a family of young, and discovered for myself
+that _they_ have straight bills; a most curious and interesting instance
+of adaptation.
+
+At the head of the garden stands a tree that always reminds me of the
+horses I rode in California. I watched my first bush-tit's nest under
+it, with Canello grazing near; and five years later watched another
+bush-tit's nest there, sitting in the crotch of the oak with Mountain
+Billy looking over my shoulder. Although Billy was, in his prime, a
+bucking mustang, he became more of a petted companion than Canello had
+been; and when we were out alone together, we were a great deal of
+company for each other. As soon as I dismounted he would put his head
+down to have me slip the reins off over his ears, so that he could graze
+by himself. Sometimes, when he stood behind me he rested his bridle on
+my sun-hat, and once went so far as to take a bite out of the brim--in
+consideration of its being straw. If I were sitting on the ground and he
+was grazing near, he would at times walk up and gravely raise his face
+to look into mine. When he got tired, he would rub up against my arm and
+yawn, looking down at me with a friendly smile in his eyes.
+
+Birding was rather dull for Billy--when there was neither grass nor
+poison ivy at hand, but he had one never-failing source of
+enjoyment--rolling. He tried it in the sand under the oak, one day, with
+the saddle on. Before I knew what he was about he was down on his knees,
+sitting still, with a comical, helpless look in his eyes, as if quite at
+a loss to know what to do next, having become conscious of the saddle.
+When I had gotten him on his feet and finished lecturing him I uncinched
+the saddle, laid it one side on the ground, took hold of the end of the
+long bridle, and told him to roll. A droll abstracted look came into
+his eyes, he dropped on his knees and, with a sudden convulsion, threw
+his heels into the air and rolled back and forth, rubbing his backbone
+vigorously on the sand. After that, the first thing every morning when
+we got to the oaks, I unsaddled him and let him roll, and then he would
+stand with bare back keeping cool in the shade of the trees.
+
+One morning as we stood under the bush-tit's tree, I discovered a pair
+of turtle doves looking out at me from the leaves of the small oak
+opposite, craning their necks and moving their heads uneasily. One of
+them seemed to be shaping a nest of twigs. I drew Billy around between
+us, so that my staring would seem less pointed, and when one of the pair
+flew to the ground to spy at me, hurriedly looked the other way to
+remove his anxiety. His mate soon joined him, and the two doves walked
+away together, fixed their feathers in the sun, stretched their wings,
+and lazily picked at the ground. When one whirred back to the nest, the
+other soon followed. The gentle lovers put their bills together, while,
+unnoticed, I stood behind Billy, looking on and thinking that it was
+little wonder such birds should rise from the ground with a musical
+whirr.
+
+Billy's oak was the last of the high trees in the garden. Above it was a
+grassy space where bright wild flowers bloomed, and pretty cottontail
+rabbits often went ambling over the soft turf. On one side of the
+opening was a low stocky oak, full of balls of mistletoe, and on the
+other a great blossoming bush buzzing with hummingbirds. The mistletoe
+had begun to sap the little oak, and on one of its dead twigs a
+hummingbird had taken to perching. I wondered if he were the idle mate
+of one of my small garden builders, but he sat and sunned himself as if
+his conscience were quite clear.
+
+My first experience with gnatcatchers had been here. I suspected a nest,
+and the ranchman's daughter went with me to hunt through the brush. She
+cautioned me to look out for rattlesnakes, but the brush was so dense
+and the ground so covered with crooked snake-like sticks that it was not
+an easy matter to tell what you were stepping on. Then, the poison oak
+was so thick that I felt like holding up my hands to avoid it. We pushed
+our way through the dense chaparral, and my fearless companion got down
+on her hands and knees to look through the tangle for the nest. It was
+hard disagreeable work, even if one did not object to snakes, and we
+were soon so tired that we were ready to sit down and let the birds show
+us to their house. We might have saved ourselves all the trouble if we
+had done this to begin with, for it was only a few moments before the
+little pair went to the mistletoe oak, out in plain sight and within
+easy reach--how they would have laughed in their sleeves had they known
+what we were hunting for back in the brush! The nest was about the size
+of a chilicothe pod, and so covered with lichen that it looked just like
+a knot on the tree.
+
+Around the blossoming bush the air fairly vibrated with hummers, darting
+up into the sky, shooting down and chasing each other pell
+mell--sometimes almost into my face. As I sat by the bush one day, a
+handsome male went around with upraised throat, poking his bill up the
+red fuchsia-like tubes. Another one was flying around inside the bush,
+and I edged nearer to see. The sun shone in, whitening the twigs, and as
+the bird whirred about with a soft burring sound, I caught gleams of
+red, gold, and green from his gorget, and could see the tiny bird rest
+his wee feet on a twig to reach up to a blossom. Then he hummed what
+sounded more like a love song than anything I had ever heard from a
+hummingbird. He seemed so much more like a real bird than any of his
+brothers that I felt attracted to him.
+
+One morning a little German girl, in a red pinafore, and with hair
+flying, came riding down the sand stream toward my bush. Her colt reared
+and pranced, but she sat as firmly as if she had been a small centaur.
+It was a holiday, and she was staking out her horses to graze, making
+gala-day work of it. She had one horse down by the little oak already,
+and springing off the one she had brought, changed about, jumped as
+lightly as a bird upon the other's back and raced home. Soon she came
+galloping back again, and so she went and came until tired out, for pure
+fun on her free holiday.
+
+In looking over the bright memory pictures of my beautiful oak garden,
+there is one to which I always return. The spreading trunks of a great
+five-stemmed tree on one side of the grove made a dark oaken couch,
+screened by the leafy willow-like branches that hung to the ground.
+Here--after looking to see that there were no rattlesnakes coiled in the
+dead leaves--I spent many a dreamy hour, reclining idly as I listened to
+the free songs of the birds that could not see me behind my curtain. It
+was interesting to note the way certain sounds predominated; certain
+songs would absorb one's attention, and then pass and be replaced by
+others. At one time a jay's scream would jar on the ear and drown all
+other voices; when that had passed, the chewinks would fly up from the
+leaves and sing and answer each other till the air was quivering with
+their trills. Then came the thrashers, with their loud rollicking songs;
+and when they had pitched down into the brush, out rang the clear
+bell-like tones of the wren-tit, filling the air with sound. Afterwards
+the impatient whipped-out notes of the chaparral vireo were followed by
+the soft cooing of doves; and then, as the wind stirred the trees and
+sent the loosened oak blossoms drifting to the ground, from high out of
+an oak top came a most exquisite song. At the first note of this
+grosbeak all other songs were forgotten--they were noise and
+chatter--this was pure music. It was like passing from the cries of the
+street into the hall of a symphony concert. The black-headed grosbeak
+has not the spirituality of the hermit thrush, and his ordinary song is
+not so remarkable, but his love song excels that of any bird I have ever
+heard in finish, rich melody, and music. As I listened, my surroundings
+harmonized so perfectly with the wonderful song echoing through the
+great trees that the old oak garden seemed an enchanted bower. The
+drooping branches were a leafy lattice through which the afternoon sun
+filtered, steeping the oaks in thick still sunshine. Last year's leaves
+drifted slowly to the ground, while the bees droned about the yellow
+tassels of the blooming trees. As a violinist, lingering to perfect a
+note, draws his bow again and again over the strings, so this rapt
+musician dwelt tenderly on his highest notes, trolling them over till
+each was more exquisite and tender than the last, and the ear was
+charmed with his love song--a song of ideal love fit to be dreamed of in
+this stately green oak garden filled with golden sunlight.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+A MYSTERIOUS TRAGEDY.
+
+
+ON a peg just inside the door of the ranchman's old wine shed hung one
+of the horses' unused nosebags. A lad on the place told me that a wren
+had a nest in it, and added that he had seen a fight between the wren
+and a pair of linnets who seemed to be trying to steal her material.
+
+The first time I went to the wine shed both wrens and linnets were
+there, but nothing happened and I forgot about the original quarrel. By
+peering through a crack in the boarding I could look down on the wren in
+the nosebag inside. I could see her dark eyes, the white line over them,
+and her black barred tail. She was Vigor's wren. She got so tame that
+she would not stir when the creaking door was opened close by her, or
+when people were talking in the shed; and I used to go often to see how
+her affairs were progressing.
+
+All her eggs hatched in time, and the small birds, from being at first
+all eyeball, soon got to be all bill. When I opened the bag to look at
+them, the light woke them up and they opened their mouths, showing
+chasms of yellow throat.
+
+The mother bird fed them several times when I was watching only a few
+feet away. She would come ambling along in the pretty wren fashion, with
+her tail over her back; creeping down the side of a lath, running behind
+a rafter, scolding as though to make conversation, and then winding down
+to the nest through a crack. One day she hesitated, and waited to spy at
+me, since I had thought it polite to stare at her! When satisfied, she
+hopped along from beam to beam, her bright eyes still upon me. Then her
+mate joined her. He had been suspicious of me at our first meeting, but
+apparently had changed his mind, for, seeing his spouse hesitate, he
+glanced at me unconcernedly, as much as to say, "Is she all you're
+waiting for?" and flew out, leaving her to my tender mercies. She hopped
+meekly into the bag after that rebuke, but stretched up to peer at me
+once more before settling down inside.
+
+One day when I looked in to see how wren matters were progressing, to my
+amazement and horror, instead of my wren's nest I found another, high in
+the mouth of the bag with one fresh egg in it! The egg was a linnet's,
+and the nest had been built right on top of the wren's. Such a stench
+came from the bag that I took out the upper nest and found the four
+little wrens dead in their crib.
+
+[Illustration: The Nosebag Nest.
+
+(Vigors's Wren.)]
+
+I had become very fond of the winsome mother bird, and so much
+interested in her brood that this horrid discovery came like a tragedy
+in the family of a friend.
+
+And what did it all mean? Unless the old wrens had been dead, could the
+linnets have gotten possession? The wrens were usually able to hold
+their own in a discussion. If the nestlings had been alive, would the
+linnets--would any bird--have built upon them, deliberately burying them
+alive? It seemed too diabolical. On the other hand, what could have
+killed the little wrens and left them in the nest? If they had been dead
+when the linnets came to build, how could the birds have chosen such a
+sepulchre for a building site?
+
+Grieving over my little friends, I cleaned out the nosebag and hung it
+up on its peg. Three weeks later I discovered, to my great perplexity,
+that a pair of wrens had built in the bottom of the bag and had one egg
+in the nest. Now, was this the same pair of birds that had built there
+before, and if so, what did it all mean?
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+HOW I HELPED BUILD A NEST.
+
+
+THEY picked out their crack in the oak and began to build without any
+advice from me, winning little gray-crested titmice that they were.
+Their oak was right behind the ranch-house barn; I found it by hearing
+the bird sing there. The little fellow, warmed by his song, flitted up
+the tree a branch higher after each repetition of his loud cheery
+_tu-whit', tu-whit', tu-whit', tu-whit'_. Meanwhile his pretty mate,
+with bits of stick in her bill, walked down a crack in the oak trunk.
+
+Thinking she had gone, I went to examine the place. I poked about with a
+twig but couldn't find the nest till, down in the bottom of the crack, I
+spied a little gray head and a pair of bright eyes looking up at me. The
+bird started forward as if to dart out, but changed her mind and stayed
+in while I took a hasty look and fled, more frightened than she by the
+intrusion.
+
+The titmice had been flying back and forth from the hen-yard with
+chicken's feathers, and it seemed such slow work for them I thought I
+would help them. So the next day, when the pair were away, I stuffed a
+few white feathers into the mouth of the nest and withdrew under the
+shadow of the barn to watch through my glass without being observed.
+Then my conscience began to trouble me. What if this interference should
+drive the gentle bird to desert her nest?
+
+[Illustration: The Plain Titmouse in her Doorway.]
+
+When I heard the familiar chickadee call--the titmouse often chirrups
+like his cousin--it made me quake guiltily. What would the birds do? The
+gray pair came flying in with crests raised, and my small friend hopped
+down to her doorway. She gave a start of surprise at sight of the
+feathers, but after a moment's hesitation went bravely in! While she was
+inside, her mate waited in the tree, singing for her; and when she came
+out, he flew away with her. Then I crept up to the oak, and to my
+delight found that all the feathers had disappeared. She evidently
+believed in taking what the gods provide. In fact, she seemed only to
+wish that they would provide more, for, after taking a second supply
+from me, she stood in the vestibule, cocked her crested head, and looked
+about as if expecting to see new treasures.
+
+She had common-sense enough to take what she found at hand, but if she
+had not been such a plucky little builder she would have been scared
+away by the strange sights that afterwards met her at her nest. Once
+when she came, feathers were sticking in the bark all around the crack.
+She hesitated--the rush of her flight probably fanned the air so the
+white plumes waved in her face--she hesitated and looked around timidly
+before getting courage to go in; and on leaving the nest flew away in
+nervous haste; but she was soon back again, and ready to take the
+feathers down inside the oak. She caught hold of the tip of one that was
+wedged into a crack, and tugged and tugged till I was afraid she would
+get discouraged and go off without it. She got it, however, and drew it
+in backwards. Then she attacked another feather, but finding that it
+came harder than the first, let go her hold and took an easier one. She
+was not to be daunted, though, and after stowing away the loose one came
+back for the tight one again, and persevered till she bent it in several
+places, besides breaking off the tip.
+
+When she had flown off, I jumped up, ran to the oak, and stuffed the
+doorway full of feathers. Before I had finished, the family sentinel
+caught me--I had been in too much of a hurry and he had heard me walking
+over the cornstalks. He eyed me suspiciously and gave vent to his
+disapproval, but I addressed him in such friendly terms that he soon
+flew off and talked to his mate reassuringly, as if he had decided that
+it was all right after all. After their conversation she came back and
+made the best of her way right down through the feather-bed! I went away
+delighted with her perseverance, and charmed by her confidence and
+pretty performances.
+
+The next day I heard the titmouse singing in an elder by the kitchen,
+and went out to see how the birds acted when gathering their own
+material. The songster was idly hunting through the branches, singing,
+while his mate--busy little housewife--was hard at work getting her
+building stuff. She had something in her beak when I caught sight of
+her, but in an instant was down on the ground after another bit. Then
+she flew up in the tree looking among the leaves; in passing she swung
+a moment on a strap hanging from a branch; then flew down among the
+weeds, back up in the tree again; and so back and forth, over and over,
+her bill getting fuller and fuller.
+
+I was glad to save her work, and interested to see how far she would
+accept my help. Once when I blocked the entrance with feathers and
+horsehair she stopped, and, though her bill was full, picked up the
+packet and flew out on a branch with it. Was she going to throw away my
+present? For a moment my faith in her was shaken. Perhaps her mate had
+been warning her to beware of me. She did drop the mat of
+horsehair--what did such a dainty Quaker lady as she want of
+horsehair?--but she kept tight hold of one of the feathers, although it
+was almost as big as she was; and flew back quickly to the nest with it.
+
+This performance proved one point. She would not take everything that
+was brought to her. She preferred to hunt for her own materials rather
+than use what she did not like. Now the question was, what did she like?
+
+My next experiment was with some lamp wick to which I had tied bits of
+cotton. The titmouse took the cotton and would have taken the wicking, I
+think, if it had not been fastened in too tight for her. After that I
+tried tying bits of cotton to strings, and letting them dangle before
+the mouth of the nest. Though I moved up to within twenty feet of the
+nest, she paid no attention to me but hurried in. She liked the cotton
+so well she stopped in her hallway, reached up to pull at the white
+bundles, and tweaked and tugged till, finally, she backed triumphantly
+down the hole with one.
+
+Her mate, less familiar with my experiments, started to go to the nest
+after her, but the sight of the cotton scared him so he fled
+ignominiously back into the treetop. He stayed there singing till she
+came out, when he flew up to her with a dainty he had discovered--at
+least the two put their bills together; perhaps it was just a caress,
+for they were a tender, gentle little pair.
+
+Having proved that my bird liked feathers and cotton, I wanted to see
+what she thought of straws. Apparently she did not think much of them.
+She looked very much dashed when she came home and found the yellow
+sticks protruding from the nest hole. She hesitated, turned her head
+over, flew to a twig on one side of the oak and then back to one on the
+other side. Finally she mustered courage, and with her crest flattened
+as if she did not like it, darted down into the hole. When she flew out,
+however, she went right to her mate, and forgetting all her troubles at
+sight of him, fluttered her wings and lisped like a young bird as she
+put up her bill to have him feed her.
+
+Perhaps it was unkind to bother the poor bird any more, but I meant her
+no harm and the fever for experiment possessed my blood. I tied some of
+the straws to a piece of wicking and baited it with feathers, thinking
+that perhaps she would take the straws for the sake of the feathers and
+wicking. I also stuffed the hole with horsehair. She did pull at the
+feather end of the line; I saw the straw jerk, and, when she had left,
+found a round hole the brave little bird had made right through the
+middle of the mat of horsehair I had stopped the nest with.
+
+Straws and horsehair the titmouse evidently classed together. They were
+not on her list of building materials. On reflection she decided that
+the horsehair would make a good hall carpet, so left it in the
+vestibule, though she would have none of it down in her nest; but she
+calmly threw my straws down on the ground at the foot of the oak.
+
+I don't know what experiments I might have been tempted to try next had
+I not suddenly found myself dismissed--the house was complete. My pretty
+Quaker lady sat in the shade of the oak leaves with crest raised and the
+flickering sunlight flecking her gray breast. She pecked softly at one
+of the white feathers that blew up against her as she listened to the
+song of her mate; and then flew away to him without once going to the
+nest. Evidently her work was done, and she was waiting till it should be
+time to begin brooding.
+
+Ten days later I saw her mate come with his bill full of worms and lean
+down by the hole to call her. She answered with a sweet pleading
+twitter, and reached up to be fed. When he had gone, perhaps she thought
+she would like a second bite. At any rate, she hopped out in the doorway
+and flew off to another tree, calling out _tsché-de-de_ so sweetly he
+would surely have come back to her had he been within hearing.
+
+A few days later I saw him feed her at the nest five or six times in
+half an hour. He would come to the next oak, light and call to her, when
+she would answer from inside the tree trunk and he would go to her. I
+was near enough to see her pretty gray head and black eyes coming up out
+of the crack in the oak. Sometimes when he had fed her he would call out
+and she would answer as if saying good-by from down in the nest. One
+morning I found the devoted little mate bringing her breakfast to her at
+half past six.
+
+Nearly a month later they were feeding their young. The winsome mother
+bird, who had looked so tired and nest-worn the last time I saw her, was
+now as plump and happy as her spouse. When I thought the pair were away,
+I went to try to get sight of the nestlings down the hole. The old birds
+appeared as soon as I set foot by the oak and took upon themselves to
+scold me. They chattered softly in a way they had never done before.
+They quickly got used to me again, however, and fed the little ones
+without hesitation right before me, knowing full well that a person who
+had helped them build their nest would never harm their little brood;
+and it was a disappointment when I had to go away and leave the winning
+family.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+IN OUR NEIGHBOR'S DOOR-YARD.
+
+
+THE little German girl with the scarlet pinafore was a near neighbor,
+living at the head of the valley in a cottage surrounded by great
+live-oaks. These trees were alive with birds. Bush-tits flew back and
+forth, busily hanging their gray pockets among the leafy folds of the
+drooping branches; blue jays flew through, squawking on their way to the
+brush; goldfinches, building in the orchard, lisped sweetly as they
+rested in the oaks; and a handsome oriole who was building in the grove
+flew overhead so slowly he seemed to be retarded by the fullness of his
+own sweet song. But I had become so fond of the gentle gray titmouse
+whose nest I had helped to build, that of all the bird songs in the
+trees, its cheery _tu-whit', tu-whit', tu-whit'_ was most enticing to
+me. How delightful it would be to watch another pair of the winning
+workers! I did see one of the birds enter a hollow branch, one day, and
+not long after saw it go down a hole in an oak trunk; but never saw it
+afterwards in either place. Back and forth I followed that elusive
+voice, hoping to discover the nest, but I suspect the bird was only
+prospecting, and had not even begun to work.
+
+The little German Gretchen became interested in the search for the
+titmouse's nest, and told me that a gray bird had built in an oak in
+front of her house. I rode right over to see it, but found the gray bird
+a female Mexican bluebird, whose brilliant ultramarine mate sat on the
+fence of the vegetable garden in plain sight. The children kept better
+watch of the nest after that, and a few days later, when in my attic
+study, I heard the tramp of a horse, and, looking out, found my little
+friend under the window, come to tell me that the eggs had hatched. When
+her older sister came for the washing I asked her if she had seen the
+old birds go to the nest, and she said, "Yes; one was blue and the other
+gray."
+
+When I rode up again, the young had grown so that from the saddle I
+could look down the hole and see their big mouths and bristling
+pin-feathers. The mother bird was about the tree, and her soft dull
+coloring toned in well with the gray bark. The bluebirds had a double
+front door, and went in one side to come out the other. I saw both of
+them feed the young, the male flying into the hole straight from the
+fence post.
+
+It seemed such hard work finding worms out in the hot sun that I
+wondered if birds' eyes ever ached from the intentness of their search,
+and if there were near-sighted birds. Perhaps the intervals of feeding
+depend on the worm supply rather than the dietary principles of the
+parents.
+
+Gretchen's mother was bending over her wash-tubs out under the oaks, and
+I called her attention to the pretty birds brooding in her door-yard,
+telling her that they were good friends of hers, eating up the worms
+that destroyed her flowers and vegetables. "So?" she asked, but seemed
+ready to let the subject drop there, and hurried back to her work. A
+poor widow with a large family of children and a ranch to look after can
+find little time, even in beautiful California, to enjoy what Nature
+places in her door-yard.
+
+Three weeks later Gretchen came riding down to tell me that there were
+eggs in the tree again. The bluebird bid fair to be as hardworked as the
+widow, at that rate, I thought, when I went up to look at them. The
+children showed me the nest of a goldfinch, near the ground, in one of
+the little orange-trees in front of the house. They also pointed out
+linnets' nests in the vines by the door, and the oldest child said
+eagerly, "When we came home from school there was a hummingbird in the
+window, and we caught it," adding, "I think it must have been a father
+hummingbird." "Why?" I asked, "was it pretty?" "Yes, it just shined,"
+she exclaimed enthusiastically.
+
+When the family were at home, their puppy would bark at us furiously,
+and follow us about suspiciously, but when he had been left on the
+ranch alone he was glad of our society. Then when I watched the
+bluebirds, he came and curled down by my side, becoming so friendly that
+he actually grew jealous of Billy, and turned to have me caress him each
+time that the little horse walked up to have the flies brushed off his
+nose, or having pulled up a bunch of grass by the roots, brought it for
+me to hold so that he could eat it without getting the dirt in his
+mouth.
+
+Going home one day, Billy came upon a gopher snake. Now Canello had been
+brought up in a rattlesnake country, and was always on his guard, but
+Billy was 'raised' in the mountains, where snakes are scarce, and did
+not seem to know what they were. He had given me a good deal of anxiety
+by this indifference--he had stepped over a big one once without seeing
+any need for haste--and I had been expecting that he would get bitten.
+Here, then, was my chance to give him a scare. The gopher snake was
+harmless; perhaps, if I could get him so close to it that he would see
+it wriggle away from under his feet, he might be less indifferent to
+rattlers.
+
+The gopher snake was three or four feet long, and lay as straight as a
+stick across our path. As I urged Billy up beside it, he actually
+stepped on the tip of its tail. The poor snake writhed a little, but
+gave no other sign of pain; its rôle was to remain a stick. And Billy
+certainly acted as if it were. I threw the reins on his neck, thinking
+that if he put his head down to graze he might make a discovery. Then a
+horrid thought came to me. The people said the rattlers sometimes lost
+their rattles. In a general way, rattlers and gopher snakes look alike;
+what if this were a rattlesnake, and at my bidding my little horse
+should be struck! But no. There was no mistaking the long tapering body
+of the gopher, and it lacked the wide flat head of the rattler. But I
+might have spared myself my fears. Billy would not even put his head
+down, and when I tried to force him upon the snake he quietly turned
+aside. To make the snake move, I threw a stick at it, but it was as
+obstinate as Billy himself. Then I slipped to the ground, and picking up
+a long pole gave it a gingerly little poke. Still motionless! I tried
+another plan, taking Billy away a few yards. Then at last the snake
+slowly pulled itself along. But the moment we came back it turned into a
+stick again, and Billy relapsed into indifference. It was no use. I
+could do nothing with either of them. I would see the snake go off,
+anyway, I thought, so withdrew and waited till it felt reassured, when
+it started. Its silken skin shone as it wormed silently through the
+grass and disappeared down a hole without a sound, and I reflected that
+it might also come _up_ without a sound, very likely beside me as I sat
+on the dead leaves!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+WHICH WAS THE MOTHER BIRD?
+
+
+THE second time I went to California the little whitewashed adobe
+opposite my ranch was still standing, but an acacia-tree had grown over
+the well where the black phœbe had nested, and the shaft was so
+overrun with bushes and vines that it was hard to find a trace of it.
+Drawn by pleasant memories, I rode in one morning, sure of finding
+something interesting about the old place.
+
+I had not waited long before the chip of a young bird came from the
+vines over the well. It proved a callow nestling, with no tail, and
+little to mark its parentage. Presently a brown long-tailed wren-tit
+came with food in its bill and peered down through the leaves at it; and
+then a California towhee came and sat around till satisfied as to whose
+child was crying. A moment later a lazuli bunting flew over with food in
+her bill, and I at once bethought me of the lazuli-like markings, the
+brownish wing-bars and the sharp cry of "quit," which none but a lazuli
+could give. That surely was my bird.
+
+But if so, what did this interest on the part of the wren-tit mean? She
+hopped about the nestling with tail up and crest raised, chattering to
+it in low mysterious tones; and when I suspected her of giving her worm
+to it, suddenly turned her head and looked away with a suspiciously
+non-committal air. The lazuli, however, sat indifferently on a branch
+and plumed her feathers, though when she did fly down toward the young
+one, the wren-tit gave way. But even then the lazuli did not feed the
+small bird. When she had gone, the wren-tit came back. She spoke low to
+the nestling, and drew it down into the thick part of the tangle where I
+could not see them, though there was a hint of tiny quivering wings, and
+I was morally certain that the old bird was feeding it, especially when
+she flew up in sight with the smart air of having outwitted me.
+
+I was getting more and more bewildered. What did it all mean? Were there
+two families of young down in the tangle? If not, why were two old birds
+feeding one little one, and to which mother did the child belong? The
+wisdom of Solomon was needed to solve the riddle.
+
+The wren-tit simply devoted herself to the little bird, going and coming
+for it constantly; while the lazuli, ordinarily the most nervous noisy
+bird when her young are disturbed, sat around silently, or flew away
+without remark. I became so impressed by the wren-tit side of the case
+that I quite forgot the lazuli note and markings.
+
+Just as I thought I had come to a decision in the case, a male lazuli
+flew in, lighting atilt of an acacia stalk opposite the wren-tit. But
+when he saw me he craned his neck and flew off in a hurry--no father,
+surely, scared away at the first glimpse of me! However, I was not clear
+in my mind, and sat down to puzzle the matter out.
+
+At this juncture Madame Lazuli came with food; the young bird turned
+toward her for it, and behold! she took to her wings with all she had
+brought. I had hardly time to congratulate myself on this new piece of
+testimony, when back came the lazuli with her bill full!
+
+In my perplexity I moved so near the little one that, without meaning
+to, I forced the old birds to show their true colors. The situation was
+too dangerous to admit of further subterfuge. Both Madame Lazuli and her
+handsome blue mate--whom I discovered at a safe distance up on a high
+branch out of reach--flew down and dashed about, twitching their tails
+from side to side as they cried "quit," in nervous tones; altogether
+acting so much like anxious parents that I had to relinquish my theory
+that the little bird belonged to the wren-tit. Like the mother whom
+Solomon judged, she forgot all else when real danger threatened the
+child. Having come to my decision from circumstantial evidence, I
+remembered with a start that I had known it all the time, from the
+wing-bars and the call note! Nevertheless, my riddle was only half
+solved, for how about the wren-tit?
+
+A young bird called from the sycamore at the corner of the adobe, and
+when both old birds flew over to it, I thought I'd better follow. I got
+there just in time to see a little bird light in the elbow of a limb,
+totter as if going to fall, and save itself by snuggling up in the
+elbow, where it sat in the sun looking very cozy and comfortable--winning
+little tot. The mother lazuli started to come to it, but seeing me flew
+away to another branch, where, well screened, she stretched up on her
+toes to look at me over the top of a big sycamore leaf. Though the
+fledgling called, the mother left without going to it.
+
+The wren-tit had stayed behind at the well; but while the lazuli was
+gone, who should come flying in but the foster mother! I was astonished.
+Moreover, the instant the youngster set eyes on her, it started up and
+flew to her--actually flew into her in its hurry. She admonished it
+gently, in a soft chattering voice, for she could not scold it.
+
+When the lazuli came back with food, it was only to see her little bird
+flying off to the other side of the tree after the wren-tit! I thought
+she seemed bewildered, but she followed in their wake--we all followed.
+Here came a closer test. Both lazuli and wren-tit stood before the small
+bird. Which would it go to? The lazuli kept silent, but the wren-tit
+called softly and the little one raised its wings and flew toward her,
+leaving its mother behind.
+
+I watched and waited, but the wren-tit did not give over her kind
+offices, and the last I saw of the birds, on riding away, the three were
+flying in procession across the brush, the lazuli following its mother
+and the wren-tit bringing up the rear.
+
+I went home very much puzzled. Was the wren-tit a lonely mother bird who
+had lost her own little ones, or was she merely an old maid with a warm
+spot in her heart for other peoples' little folks?
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+A RARE BIRD.
+
+
+WE may say that we care naught for the world and its ways, but most of
+us are more or less tricked by the high-sounding titles of the mighty.
+Even plain-thinking observers come under the same curse of Adam, and,
+like the snobs who turn scornfully from Mr. Jones to hang upon the words
+of Lord Higginbottom, will pass by a plain _brown chippie_ to study with
+enthusiasm the ways of a _phainopepla_! Sometimes, however, in
+ornithology as in the world, a name does cover more than its letters,
+and we are duped into making some interesting discoveries as well as
+learning some of the important lessons in life. In the case of the
+phainopepla, no hopes that could be raised by his cognomen would equal
+the rare pleasure afforded by a study of his unusual ways.
+
+[Illustration: THE PHAINOPEPLAS ON THE PEPPER-TREE]
+
+On my first visit to Twin Oaks I caught but brief glimpses of this
+distinguished bird. Sometimes for a moment he lit on a bare limb and I
+had a chance to admire his high black crest and glossy blue-black coat,
+which with one more touch of color would become iridescent. He was so
+slenderly formed, and his shining coat was so smooth and trim, he
+made me think of a bird of glass perched on a tree. But while I gazed at
+him he would launch into the air and wing his way high over the valley
+to the hillsides beyond, leaving me to marvel at the white disks on his
+wings, hidden when perching, but in air making him suggest a black ship
+with white sails.
+
+His appearance was so elegant and his ways so unusual that I went back
+East regretting I had not given more time to a bird who was so
+individual, and resolved that if I ever returned to California my first
+pleasure should be to study him. When the time finally came, an
+ornithologist friend who knew my plans wrote, exclaiming, "Do study the
+phainopeplas!" and added that she felt like making a journey to
+California to see that one bird.
+
+From the middle of March till the middle of May I watched and waited for
+the phainopeplas. There had been only a few of the birds before, and I
+began to fear they had left the valley. When despairing of them,
+suddenly one day I saw a black speck cross over to the hills. I wanted
+to drop my work and follow, but went on with my rounds, and one bright
+morning on my way home after a discouraging hunt for nests, a pair of
+phainopeplas flew up right before my eyes almost within sight of the
+house. I dropped down behind a bush, and in a moment more the birds flew
+to a little oak by the road--a tree I had been sitting under that very
+morning! The female seated herself on top of the oak, watching me with
+raised crest, while her mate disappeared in a dark mat of leaves,
+probably mistletoe, where he stayed so long that the possibility of a
+nest waxed to a probability, and I made a rapid but ecstatic ascent to
+the observer's seventh heaven. A phainopepla's nest right on my own
+doorsill! I could hardly restrain my impatience, and was tempted to shoo
+the birds away so I could go to the nest; when suddenly they opened
+their wings and, crossing the valley, disappeared up a side canyon!
+Pulling myself together and reflecting that I might have known better
+than to imagine there would be a nest so near home, I took up my
+camp-stool and trudged back to the house.
+
+After that came a number of tantalizing hints. When watching the third
+gnatcatcher's nest I had seen a pair of phainopeplas flying suggestively
+back and forth from the brush to the various oaks, and thought the
+handsome lover fed his mate as his relative the gentle high-bred waxwing
+does. Surely the wooing of these beautiful birds should be carried on
+with no less fine feeling, courtesy, and tenderness; and so it seems to
+be. The black knight flew low over my head slowly, as if inspecting me,
+and then came again with his lady, as if having said, "Dear one, I would
+consult you upon this impending danger."
+
+After that, something really delightful came about. Day by day, on
+riding back to our ranch-house, I found phainopeplas there eating the
+berries of the pepper-trees in our front yard. Before long the birds
+began coming early in the morning; their voices were the first sounds we
+heard on awakening and almost the last at night, and soon we realized
+the delightful fact that our trees had become the feeding ground for all
+the phainopeplas of the valley. Altogether there were five or six pairs.
+It was a pretty sight to see the black satiny birds perched on one of
+the delicate sprays of the willowy pepper-trees, hanging over the
+grape-like clusters, to pluck the small pink berries. The birds soon
+grew very friendly, and, though they gave a cry of warning when the cats
+appeared, became so tame they would answer my calls and let me watch
+them from the piazza steps, not a rod away.
+
+When they first began to linger about the house we thought they were
+building near, and when one flew into an oak across the road, almost
+gave me palpitation of the heart by the suggestion. But no nest was
+there, and when the bird flew away it rose obliquely into the air
+perhaps a hundred feet, and then flew on evenly straight across to the
+small oaks on the farther side of a patch of brush that remained in the
+centre of the valley, known to the ranchmen as the 'Island.' The flight
+looked so premeditated that the first thing the next morning, although
+the phainopeplas were at the peppers, I rode on ahead to wait for them
+at their nest. We had not been there long before hearing the familiar
+warning call. Turning Billy in the direction of the sound, I threw his
+reins on his neck to induce him to graze along the way and give our
+presence a more casual air, while I looked up indifferently as if to
+survey the landscape. To my delight the phainopepla did not seem greatly
+alarmed, and, throwing off the assumed indifference that always makes an
+observer feel like a wretched hypocrite, I called and whistled to him as
+I had done at the house, to let him know that it was a familiar friend
+and he had nothing to fear. The beautiful bird started toward me, but on
+second thought retreated. I turned my back, but, to my chagrin, after
+giving a few low warning calls, my bird vanished. Alas, for the
+generations of murderers that have made birds distrust their best
+friends--that make honest observers tremble for what may befall the
+birds if they put trust in but one of the human species!
+
+[Illustration: THE PHAINOPEPLA'S NEST IN THE OAK BRUSH ISLAND]
+
+It was plain that if I would get a study of these rare birds I must make
+a business of it. Slipping from the saddle, I sat down behind a bush and
+waited. When the bird came back and found the place apparently deserted,
+to my relief he seated himself on a twig and sang away as if nothing had
+disturbed his serenity of spirit. But presently the warning call sounded
+again. This time it was for a schoolgirl who had staked out her horse
+on the edge of the island and was crossing over to the schoolhouse. A
+few moments later the bell rang out so loudly that Billy stepped around
+his oak with animation, but the phainopeplas were used to it and showed
+no uneasiness.
+
+Before long a flash of white announced a second bird, and then, after a
+long interval in which nothing happened, the male pitched into a bush
+with beak bristling with building material! My delight knew no bounds.
+Instead of nesting in the top of an oak in a remote canyon, as I had
+been assured the shy birds would do, here they were building in a low
+oak not more than an eighth of a mile from the house, and in plain
+sight. Moreover, they were birds who knew me at home, and so would
+really be much less afraid than strangers, whatever airs they assumed.
+In the photograph, the bare twigs of the perch tree show above the line
+of the horizon; the nest tree is the low oak beside it on the right. One
+thing puzzled me from the outset. While the male worked on the nest, the
+female sat on the outside circle of brush as if having nothing to do, in
+spite of the fact that her gray dress toned in so well with the brush
+that she was quite inconspicuous, while his shining black coat made him
+a clear mark from a distance. What did it mean? I invented all sorts of
+fancies to account for it. Had she been to the pepper-trees so much
+less than he that she was over-troubled by my presence, and therefore
+the gallant black knight who sang to her so sweetly and was so tender of
+her, seeing her fears, took the work upon himself? Perchance he had
+said, "If you are timid, my love, I will build for you while she is by,
+for I would not have you come near if it would disquiet you."
+
+In any event, he built away quite unconcernedly not three rods from
+where I sat on the ground staring at him. He would fly to the earth for
+material, but return to the nest from above, pitching down to it as if
+having nothing to hide. Once, when resting, he perched on the tree, and
+I talked to him quite freely. That noon the phainopeplas were at the
+house before me, and I went out to talk to them while they lunched to
+let them know it was only I who had visited their nest, so they would
+have new confidence on the morrow.
+
+But on the morrow they flew to another part of the island, and when we
+followed, although I hitched Billy farther away from the nest tree and
+sat quietly behind a brush screen, they did not come back. A brown
+chippie plumed his feathers unrebuked in their oak, making the place
+seem more deserted than before. A lizard ran out from the grape cuttings
+at my feet, and a little black and white mephitis cantered along over
+the ground with his back arched and his head down. He nosed around under
+the bushes, showing the white V on his back, exactly like that of our
+eastern species. As I rode home, five turkey buzzards were flying low
+over the edge of the island, and one vulture rose from a meal of one of
+the little black and white animal's relatives, but I saw nothing more of
+my birds that day.
+
+The next day the phainopeplas came again to the pepper-trees and ate
+their fill while I sat on the steps watching. The male was quite
+unconcerned, but when his mate flew near me, he called out sharply; he
+could risk his own life, but not that of his love. Again the pair flew
+back to the high oaks on the far side of the island. All my hopes of the
+first low inaccessible nest vanished. I had driven the birds away. My
+intrusiveness had made me lose the best chance of the whole nesting
+season. But I would try to follow them. It did not seem necessary to
+take Billy. There were only a few trees on that side of the island, and
+it would be a simple matter to locate the birds. I would walk over, find
+in which tree they were building, and spend the morning with them. I
+went. Each oak was encircled by a thick wall of brush, over which it was
+almost impossible to see more than a fraction of the tree, and the high
+oak tops were impenetrable to eye and glass. After chasing phantoms all
+the afternoon I went home with renewed respect for Billy as an adjunct
+to field work. In order to locate anything in chaparral, one must be
+high enough to overlook the mass.
+
+That afternoon I saw a pair of phainopeplas fly up a canyon on the east,
+and another pair fly up another on the west. If I were to know anything
+of these birds, I must not be balked by faulty observing; I must at
+least do intelligent work. Riding in from the back and tying Billy out
+of sight away from the old nest, I swung myself up into a crotch of a
+low oak from which I could overlook the whole island. The phainopeplas
+soon flew in, but to the opposite side, and I was condemning myself for
+having driven them away when, to my amazement, the male flew over and
+shot down into the little oak where he had been building before! My
+self-reproach took a different form--I had not been patient enough.
+Surely if I could wait an hour for an ordinary hummingbird, I could wait
+a morning for an absent phainopepla.
+
+From the nest the beautiful bird flew to the bare oak top behind it
+which he used for a perch, and--alas! gave his warning call. I was
+discovered. He dashed his tail, turned his head to look at me first from
+one side and then from the other, and then flew to the top of the
+highest tree in sight to verify his observations. Whether he recognized
+the object as his pepper-tree acquaintance, I do not know; but to my
+great relief he went back to his work. By this time the little tree
+which had seemed such a comfortable chair had undergone a change--I felt
+as if stretched upon the gridiron of St. Anthony. Climbing down stiffly,
+I kneeled behind the brush and practiced focusing my glass on the nest
+so that it would not catch the light and frighten the bird, when out he
+flew from the nest and sat down facing me in broad daylight! He did not
+say a word, but looked around abstractedly, as if hunting for material.
+
+If he were so indifferent, perhaps it would be safe to creep nearer.
+Following the paths trodden by the bare feet of the school children, and
+spying and skulking, I crept into a good hiding-place about a rod from
+the nest. The ground was covered with dead leaves, and I saw a
+suggestive round hole--a very large rattlesnake had been killed a few
+rods away the week before. I covered the hole with my cloak and then sat
+down on the lid--nothing could come up while I was there, at all events.
+
+The phainopepla worked busily for some time, flying rapidly back and
+forth with material. Then came the warning cry. I drew in my note-book
+from the sun so that it should not catch his eye, and waited. The hot
+air grew hotter, beating down on my head. A big lizard wriggled over the
+leaves, and I thought of my rattlesnake. Then Billy sneezed in a forced
+way, as though to remind me not to go off without him. Growing
+restless, I moved the bushes a little--they were so stiff they made a
+very good chair-back if one got into the right position--when suddenly,
+looking up I saw my phainopepla friend vault into the air from a bush
+behind me, where, apparently, he had been sitting taking notes of his
+own! What observers birds are, to be sure! The best of us have much to
+learn from them.
+
+But though the phainopepla was most watchful, he was open to conviction,
+and he and his mate at last concluded that I meant them no harm.
+Afterwards, when I moved, they both came and looked at me, but went
+about their business quite unmindful of me.
+
+As I had seen from the outset, the male did almost all the building.
+When his spouse came in sight he burst out into a tender joyous love
+song. She went to the nest now and again, but generally when she came it
+was to sun herself on the bare perch tree, where she dressed her plumes
+or merely sat with crest raised and her soft gray feathers fluffed about
+her feet, while waiting for her mate to get leisure to take a run with
+her.
+
+When he had finished his stint and she was not about, he would take his
+turn on the perch tree, his handsome glossy black coat shining in the
+sun. If an unwitting neighbor lit on his tree he would flatten his
+crest and dash down indignantly, but for the most part he perched
+quietly except to make short sallies into the air for insects, sometimes
+singing as he went; or he just warbled to himself contentedly, what
+sounded like the chattering run of a swallow on the wing. One day we had
+quite a conversation. His simplest call note was like the call of a
+young robin, and while I answered him he gave his note seventeen times
+in one minute, and eleven times in the next half minute.
+
+The birds had a great variety of calls and songs, most of which were
+vivacious and cheering and seemed attuned to the warmth and brightness
+of the California sunshine. The quality of the love song was rich and
+flute-like.
+
+The male phainopepla seemed to enjoy life in general and his work in
+particular. He frequently sang to himself when going for material; and
+once, apparently, when on the nest. When he was building I could see his
+black head move about between the leaves. Like the gnatcatchers, he used
+only fine bits of material, but he did not drill them in as they did. He
+merely laid them in, or at most wove them in gently. Now and then, as
+the black head moved in front, the black tail would tilt up behind at
+the back of the nest as if the bird were moulding; but there was
+comparatively little of that. When completed, the nest was a soft felty
+structure.
+
+When working, the male would fly back and forth from the ground to the
+nest, carrying his bits of plant stem, oak blossom, and other fine
+stuff. He worked so rapidly that it kept me busy recording his visits.
+He once went to the nest four times in four minutes; at another time,
+seventeen times in a little over an hour. Sometimes he stayed only half
+a minute; when he stayed three minutes, it was so unusual that I
+recorded it. He worked spasmodically, however. One day he came seventeen
+times in one hour, but during the next half hour came only five times.
+The birds seemed to divide their mornings into quite regular periods.
+When I awoke at half past five I would hear them at the pepper-trees
+breakfasting; and some of them were generally there as late as eight
+o'clock. From eight to ten they worked with a will, though the visits
+usually fell off after half past nine. It was when working in this more
+deliberate way that the male would go to his perch on an adjoining tree
+and preen himself, catch flies, or sing between his visits. Once he sat
+on the limb in front of the nest for nearly ten minutes. By ten o'clock
+I found that I might as well go to watch other birds, as little would be
+going on with the phainopeplas; and they often flew off for a lunch of
+peppers.
+
+Just as the island nest was about done--it was destroyed! I found it on
+the ground under the tree. For a time I felt as if no nests could come
+to anything; the number that had been destroyed during the season was
+disheartening. It seemed as though I no sooner got interested in a
+little family than its home was broken up. Sometimes I wondered how a
+bird ever had courage to start a nest.
+
+But though it was hard to reconcile myself to the destruction of the
+phainopeplas' nest, I found others later. Altogether, I saw three pairs
+of birds building, and in each case the male was doing most of the work.
+Two of the nests I watched closely, watch and note-book in hand, in
+order to determine the exact proportion of work done by each bird. One
+nest was watched two hours and a half, during a period of five days, in
+which time the male went to the nest twenty-seven times, the female,
+only three. The other nest was watched seven hours and thirty-five
+minutes, during a period of ten days, in which time the male was at the
+nest fifty-seven times; the female, only eight. Taking the total for the
+two nests: in ten hours and five minutes the male went to the nest
+eighty-four times; the female, eleven. That is to say, the females made
+only thirteen per cent of the visits. In reality, although they went to
+the nest eleven times, the ratio of work might safely be reduced still
+further; for in watching them I was convinced that, as a rule, they came
+to the nest, not to build, but to inspect the building done by their
+mates. Indeed, at one nest, I saw nothing to make me suspect that the
+female did any of the work. Her coming was usually welcomed by a joyous
+song, but once the evidence seemed to prove that she was driven away;
+perhaps she was too free with her criticisms! In another case the work
+was sadly interrupted by the presence of the visitor, for while she sat
+in the nest her excited mate flew back and forth as if he had quite
+forgotten the business in hand. Perhaps he was nervous, and wanted to
+make sure what she was doing in the new house!
+
+In several instances I found that while the males were at work building,
+the females went off by themselves. Once I saw Madame Phainopepla bring
+her friend home with her. No sooner had the visitor lit than--shocking
+to relate--the lord of the house left his work and drove her off with
+bill and claw--a polite way to treat his lady's friends, surely! On one
+occasion, when I looked up I saw a procession passing overhead--two
+females followed by a male. The male flew hesitatingly, as if troubled
+by his conscience, and then, deciding that if the nest was ever going to
+be built he had better keep at it, turned around and came back to work.
+One day when I rode over to the chaparral island, I found two of the
+males sitting around in the brush. They played tag until tired, and then
+perched on a branch in the sun, side by side, evidently enjoying
+themselves like light-hearted, care-free bachelors. Their mates were
+not in sight. But suddenly I glanced up and saw two females flying in to
+the island high overhead, as if coming from a distance. Instantly the
+indifferent holiday air of their mates vanished. They gave their low
+warning calls, for I was on the ground and they must not show me their
+nests. In answer to the warning the females wavered, and then, when
+their mates joined them, all four flew away together.
+
+At other times when I rode in the males would make large circles,
+seventy-five feet above me, as if to get a clear understanding of the
+impending danger. This was when small nest hunters were about, and the
+birds were some whose nests I did not find, and who had no opportunity
+to become convinced of my good intentions.
+
+After finding that the males did most of the building, I was anxious to
+see how it would be when the brooding began. Three of my nests were
+broken up beforehand, however, and the fourth was despoiled after I had
+watched the birds on the nest one day. Nevertheless, the evidence of
+that day was most interesting as far as it went. It proved that while
+the female lacked the architect's instinct, she was not without the
+maternal instinct. There were two eggs in the nest, and in the one hour
+that I watched, each bird brooded the eggs six times. Before this, the
+female had been to the nest so much less than the male that now she was
+much shyer; but although Billy frightened her by tramping down the brush
+near by, it was she who first overcame her fears and went to cover the
+eggs.
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+MY BLUE GUM GROVE.
+
+
+ONE of the first things I did on getting settled on my ranch, the second
+time I was in California, was to get a wagon and go down to my
+eucalyptus grove for a load of the pale green aromatic boughs with which
+to trim my attic study; for their fragrance is delightful and their
+delicate blue-green tone lends itself readily to decorative purposes.
+When the supply needed replenishing, I rode down on Mountain Billy and
+carried home the sweet-smelling branches on the saddle.
+
+The grove served a more utilitarian purpose, however. The eucalyptus is
+an Australian tree, with narrow straight-hanging leaves, and its rapid
+growth makes it useful for firewood. A tree will grow forty feet in four
+years, and when cut off a few feet above the ground will spring up again
+and soon be ready to yield another crop. My grove had never been cut,
+but would soon be old enough. In the photograph of a eucalyptus avenue
+near Los Angeles, the row of trees on the right have been cut near the
+ground and the branching trunks are the consequence.
+
+[Illustration: EUCALYPTUS AVENUE, SHOWING POLLARDED TREES ON THE RIGHT,
+NEAR LOS ANGELES]
+
+My eucalyptus or blue gum grove was down near the big sycamore, and
+opposite the bare knoll where Romulus and the burrowing owls had their
+nightly battles. On one side of it was a rustling cornfield always
+pleasant to look at. After the bare yellow stubble and all the reds and
+browns of a California summer landscape, its rich dark green color and
+its stanch, strong stalks made it seem a very plain honest sort of
+field, and its greenness was most grateful to eyes unused to the bright
+colors and strong lights of California.
+
+Opposite the little grove, in a small house perched on a hill, an old
+sea-captain lived alone. As I rode by one day, he sat with his feet
+hanging over the edge of the high piazza, looking off; as if on the prow
+of his vessel, gazing out to sea. When I stopped to ask if he had seen
+anything noteworthy happen at the grove, he complained that it shut off
+his view and kept away the breeze from the ocean! I was too much taken
+by surprise to apologize for my trees, but felt reproached; unwittingly
+I had destroyed the old captain's choicest pleasure. He had spoken in an
+impersonal way that I quite understood,--he had been taken
+unawares,--but the next time I rode past, as if to make up for any
+apparent rudeness, he came hurrying down the walk to tell me of a crow's
+nest he had seen in the grove. To mark it he had fastened a piece of
+paper to the wire fence by the road, and another paper to the nest tree,
+binding it on with a eucalyptus twig in true sailor fashion.
+
+It was always a relief to leave the hot beating sun and the glare of the
+yellow fields and enter the cool shade of the quiet grove. I could let
+down the fence and put it up behind me; thus having my small forest all
+to myself; and used to enjoy riding up and down the fragrant blue
+avenues. The eucalyptus-trees, although thirty or forty feet high, were
+lithe and slender; some of them could be spanned by the hands. The rows
+were planted ten feet apart, but the long branches interlaced, so one
+had to be on the alert, in riding down the lines, to bend low on the
+saddle or push aside the branches that obstructed the way. The limbs
+were so slender and flexible that a touch was enough to bend back a
+green gate fifteen to twenty feet long, and Billy often pushed a branch
+aside with his nose. In places, fallen trees barred our path, but Billy
+used to step carefully over them.
+
+The eucalyptus-trees change very curiously as they grow old. When young
+they are covered with branches low to the ground, and their aromatic
+tender leaves are light bluish green; afterwards they lose their lower
+branches, while their leaves become stiff and sickle-shaped, dull green
+and almost odorless. The same changes are seen in the bark: first the
+trunks are smooth and green; then they are hung with shaggy shreds of
+bark; this in turn drops off so that the old trees are smooth again.
+Some of the young shoots have almost white stems, and their leaves have
+a pinkish tinge. Indeed, a young blue gum is as pretty a sight as one
+often sees; it is a tree of exquisite delicacy of coloring.
+
+[Illustration: EUCALYPTUS WOOD STORED FOR MARKET, IN A EUCALYPTUS GROVE
+NEAR LOS ANGELES]
+
+Mountain Billy and I both liked to wander among the blue gums. Billy
+liked it, perhaps, for association's sake, for we had ridden through the
+eucalyptus at his home in northern California. I too had pleasant
+memories of the northern gums, but my first interest was in finding out
+who lived in my little woods. A dog had once been seen driving a coyote
+wolf out of it, but that was merely in passing. I did not expect to meet
+wolves there. It was said, however, to be a good place for tarantulas,
+so at first I stepped over the dead leaf carpet with great caution; but
+never seeing any of the big spiders, grew brave and sat indifferently
+right on the ground before the nests, or leaning up against the trees.
+The ground was almost as hard as a rock, for the eucalyptus absorbed all
+the moisture, and that may have had something to do with its freedom
+from snakes and scorpions, though it would not explain the absence of
+caterpillars and spiders, which just then were so common outside. Though
+in the grove a great deal, I never ran into but one cobweb, and was
+conscious of the pleasant freedom from falling caterpillars. Moreover, I
+never saw a lizard in the blue gums, though dozens of them were to be
+seen about the oaks and in the brush.
+
+It was a surprise to find so many feathered folks living in the
+eucalyptus, and I took a personal interest in each one of the
+inhabitants. The first time we started to go up and down the avenues we
+scared up a pair of turtle doves, beautiful, delicately tinted gentle
+creatures, fit tenants of the lovely grove. They did not know my
+friendly interest in them, and flew to the ground trailing and trying to
+decoy me away in such a marked manner that when we passed a young dove a
+few yards farther on, it was easy to put two and two together.
+
+Yellow-birds called _cheet'-tee, ca-cheet'-ta-tee_, and the grove became
+musical with the sweet calls of the young brood. There was one nest with
+a roof of shaggy bark, and I wondered if the birds thought it would be
+pleasant to live under a roof, or whether the bark had fallen down on
+them after they built. I could get no trace of the owners of the nest,
+and it troubled me, not liking to have any little homes in my wood that
+I did not know all about. As we went down one aisle, a big bird went
+blundering out ahead of us, probably an owl, for afterwards we stumbled
+on a skeleton and feathers of one of the family.
+
+In one of the trees we came to an enormous nest made of the unusual
+materials that are sometimes chosen by that strange bird, the
+road-runner. It was an exciting discovery, for that was before the
+road-runner had come to the ranch-house, and I had been pursuing phantom
+runners over the hills in the vain attempt to learn something about
+them; while here, it seemed, one had been living under my very vine and
+fig-tree! To make sure about the nest, I spoke to my neighbor ranchman,
+and he told me that when he had been milking during the spring he had
+often seen the birds come out of the blue gums, and had also seen them
+perching there on the trees. How exasperating! If I had only come
+earlier! Now they had gone, and my chance of a nest study was lost.
+
+But my doll was not stuffed with sawdust, for all of that. There was
+still much to enjoy, for a mourning dove flew from her nest of twigs
+almost over Billy's head, and it made me quite happy to know that the
+gentle bird was brooding her eggs in my woods. Then it was delightful to
+see a lazuli bunting on her nest down another aisle. It seemed odd, for
+there was her little cousin nesting out in the weeds in the bright sun,
+while she was raising her brood in the shady forest. The two nests were
+as unlike as the sites. The bird outside had used dull green weeds,
+while this one used beautiful shining oak stems. I thought the pretty
+bird would surely be safe here, but one day when I called, expecting to
+see a growing family, I was shocked to find a pathetic little skeleton
+in the nest.
+
+One afternoon in riding down the rows, I came face to face with two
+mites of hummingbirds seated on a branch. Their grayish green suits
+toned in with the color of the blue gums. It was a surprise when one of
+them turned to the other and fed it--the mother hummer was small enough
+to be taken for a nestling! She sat beside her son and fed him in the
+conventional way, by plunging her bill down his open mouth. When she had
+flown off, he stretched his wings, whirred them as if for practice, and
+then moved his bill as if still tasting the dainty he had had for
+supper. He sat very unconcernedly on a low branch right out in the
+middle of the road, but Billy did not run over him.
+
+I found two hummers' nests in the eucalyptus during the summer. One
+builder was the one the photographer was fortunate enough to catch
+brooding; her nest, the one so charmingly placed on a light blue branch
+between two straight spreading leaves, like the knot between two bows of
+stiff ribbon.
+
+The second nest was on a drooping branch, and, to make it stand level,
+was deepened on the down side of the limb, making it the highest
+hummingbird's nest I had ever seen. It was attached to a red leaf--to
+mark the spot, perhaps--one often wonders how a bird can come back twice
+to the same leaf in a forest. How one little home does make a place
+habitable! From a bare silent woods it becomes a dwelling-place.
+Everything seemed to centre around this little nest, then the only one
+in the grove; the tiny pinch of down became the most important thing in
+the woods. It was the castle which the trees surrounded.
+
+When I first found the nest it held two white warm eggs about as large
+as peas, and I became much interested in watching their progress, often
+riding down to see how they were getting on. The hummer did not return
+my interest. She was nervous, darting off when Billy shook himself or
+when the shadow of a soaring turkey buzzard fell over the nest; but in
+spite of that we made ourselves quite at home before her door. I would
+dismount and sit on the ground, leaning against a blue gum, while Billy
+stood by, in a bower of green leaves, with ears pricked forward
+thoughtfully, and a dreamy look of satisfaction in his eyes.
+Hummingbirds are such dainty things. Once when this one alighted on the
+rim of her nest she whirred herself right down inside. Soon she began to
+act so strangely for a brooding bird that, when she flew, I went to feel
+in the nest. The tips of my fingers touched what felt like round balls,
+but, not satisfied, I pulled down the bough and found one round ball and
+one mite of a gray back with microscopic yellow hairs on each side of
+the spine. The whole tiny body seemed to throb with its heart beats. I
+wondered how such a midget could ever be fed, but found, as in the case
+of the hummer under the little lover's tree, that the mother gave its
+food most gently, reserving her violent pumping for a more suitable age;
+though one would as soon think of poking a needle down a baby's throat
+as that bill.
+
+Often, while watching the nest, my thoughts wandered away to the grove
+itself. The brown earth between the rows was barred by alternate lines
+of sunlight and shadow, and the vista of each avenue ended in blue sky.
+Sometimes cool ocean breezes would penetrate the forest. The rows of
+trees, with their gently swaying, interlacing branches, cast moving
+shadows over the sun-touched leafy floor, giving a white light to the
+grove; for the undersides of the young eucalyptus leaves are like snow.
+From the stiff, sickle-shaped upper leaves the sun glanced, dazzling the
+eyes. Mourning doves cooed, and the sweet notes of yellow-birds filled
+the sunny grove with suggestions of happiness. A yellow butterfly
+wandered down the blue aisles. Such a secure retreat! I returned to it
+again and again, coming in out of the hot yellow world and closing
+behind me the doors of my 'rest-house,' for the little wood had come to
+seem like a cool wayside chapel, a place of peace.
+
+And when I finally left California, deserting Mountain Billy to return
+to the East, of all my haunts the one left the most unwillingly was the
+little blue gum grove, the peaceful wayside rest-house, in whose
+whitened shade we had spent so many quiet hours together.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+
+  Bee-bird, 114-116, 117.
+    catching bees, 114, 115.
+    caught in cobweb rope, 116.
+    defending nest with life, 91-92.
+    domesticity, 116.
+    flycatching, 16, 91, 160.
+    making living off blackbirds, 13.
+    nest, 91.
+    nesting site, 91, 115.
+    noisy, 15.
+    notes, 91, 116.
+    quarrelsome, 91, 115, 116.
+
+  Bird Psychology,
+    association of ideas, 46, 72, 75, 76, 77, 78, 115, 135, 138, 154,
+        198.
+    caution, 9, 22, 28, 36, 65, 66, 67, 82, 85, 87, 88, 94, 156, 196,
+        198, 201, 202, 204.
+    courage, 11-12, 23, 40, 42, 54, 83, 95, 97, 126, 129, 141, 144,
+        175, 177, 180, 181, 210, 215.
+    curiosity, 25, 97, 100, 151.
+    dissimulation, 45, 49, 62, 190, 215.
+    emotion,--
+      fear, 22, 25, 26, 27, 34, 35, 40, 41, 42, 46, 61, 67, 71, 73, 81,
+        87, 88, 105, 133, 135, 154, 164, 177, 180, 191, 215, 218;
+      grief, 46, 47, 92;
+      joy, 30, 204;
+      unusual action under excitement, 30, 58, 63, 64, 81, 87, 88, 191,
+        208.
+    expression of emotion and ideas,--
+      by use of crests, attitudes, and movements, 8, 9, 11, 16, 26, 30,
+        31, 32, 33, 34, 39, 41, 42, 44, 46, 49, 53, 56, 59, 63, 64, 67,
+        76, 78, 79, 81, 84, 87, 88, 90, 97, 101, 105, 116, 117, 124, 129,
+        132, 138, 139, 149, 156, 166, 180, 190, 191, 202, 205, 208, 215.
+      By voice,--
+        calls of warning, 5, 42, 53, 85, 197, 198, 201, 202, 203, 209;
+        conversation, 15, 25, 28, 33, 35, 36, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49,
+        52, 59, 62, 69, 71, 74, 75, 78, 84, 85, 87, 89, 90, 109, 110,
+        118, 132, 134, 145, 147, 149, 153, 156, 178, 180, 182, 190, 192;
+        cries of anger, anxiety, distress, fear, pain, 12, 45, 46, 47,
+        58, 86, 91, 94, 133, 138, 191;
+        exclamations, 44, 58, 61, 87, 115, 116, 124;
+        scoldings, 34, 36, 37, 58, 60, 86, 95, 96, 162, 172, 182;
+        songs of happiness, 8, 10, 15, 21, 22, 52, 59, 82, 83, 84, 90,
+        93, 95, 96, 97, 122, 126, 142, 169, 175, 178, 198, 205;
+        songs of love, 22, 26, 30, 31, 56, 90, 101, 142, 168, 170, 181,
+        204, 205, 208.
+    humor, 124.
+    individuality, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 22, 25, 26, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34,
+        35, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 52, 54, 56, 62, 63, 64,
+        65, 75-80, 81, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99,
+        100, 101, 111, 115, 124, 125,126, 132, 136, 139, 142, 143, 149,
+        153, 154, 163, 164, 170, 179, 181, 184, 190, 194, 195, 204, 205,
+        208, 209, 216-217.
+    inherited instincts, 75, 76, 78, 79, 156.
+    intelligence shown in,--
+      building, 17, 28, 49, 50, 53, 107, 108, 109, 114, 136, 150, 154,
+        158, 217-218;
+      disciplining young, 85;
+      getting food by others' work, 13;
+      profiting by mistakes, 107, 109, 133, 134, 153-154 (?);
+      protecting young, 8, 9, 12, 36, 37, 85, 135, 156, 191, 215;
+      removing nest from danger, 60, 114, 154;
+      selecting materials for nest, 14, 53, 56, 82, 89, 96, 107, 127,
+        144, 150, 179, 181;
+      selecting nesting site, 23, 28, 83, 93, 95, 99, 124, 127, 130,
+        131, 150;
+      silence of young in danger, 71, 85.
+    keen senses, 59, 74, 97.
+    local attachment, 6;
+      special perches, 57, 62, 126, 129, 167, 202, 204, 206.
+    play impulse, 12, 115, 124, 155 (?), 208-209.
+    pride of possession, 25, 86, 115, 204-205.
+    self-denial, 33, 50, 52.
+
+  Birds,
+    adaptation, 150, 152, 163, 164;
+      protective coloration, 10, 11, 81, 92, 101, 185, 199.
+    domestic life,--
+      accept help in building, 97, 152-153, 175-178, 179-180;
+      affection, 22, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 78, 84, 85, 90, 142, 166,
+        180, 182, 196, 201, 204, 208;
+      as parents, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 23, 24, 31-38, 46, 55, 63, 64,
+        69, 84, 85, 87, 88, 110, 111, 129, 135, 137, 154-155, 156,
+        172, 182, 185-186, 189-193, 215, 217;
+      companionship of mates, 22, 26, 27, 30, 31, 42, 46, 53, 56,
+        59, 62, 81, 83, 87, 89, 90, 106, 109, 126, 141, 142, 145,
+        166, 177, 178, 180, 182, 196, 204;
+      coquettish airs, 33;
+      courtship, 31, 90, 101, 148, 149;
+      defense of nest, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 25, 45, 46, 47, 57, 58, 86,
+        91, 92, 115, 124-125, 138, 141, 178, 182, 204-205, 209;
+      excitement when young hatch, 63;
+      family government, 12, 35, 85, 111, 156;
+      friendly birds shy at nest, 65, 66, 67, 86, 87, 88, 93, 94,
+        99, 105, 153, 198, 202, 203;
+      --habits of male at nest:
+        absent, 24, 149-155, 167;
+        brings mate food for young, 32, 63;
+        brings material to mate, 50, 52;
+        broods, 43, 44, 62;
+        builds while female looks on or goes off with other females, 199,
+        200, 203, 204, 207-208;
+        feeds mate, 27, 52, 126, 132, 134, 180, 182;
+        feeds young, 33, 82, 88;
+        guards mate, 27, 42, 53, 201;
+        helps mate build, 48, 50, 52, 61, 106, 108, 109, 126, 135, 142,
+        145;
+        sings while mate builds and broods, 22, 26, 30, 31, 33, 56, 83,
+        84, 90, 175, 177, 178;
+      interval between building and brooding, 59, 145, 181;
+      looking for nesting sites, 25, 26, 129, 184-185;
+      lordly airs of male, 25, 115, 116, 117, 172, 208;
+      paternal instinct, 31-33, 53, 63, 191, 204, 205;
+      persistence in work, 60, 107, 178;
+      reluctance to brood, 43, 44;
+      tenderness to young, 23, 33, 84, 85.
+    food,--
+      ants, 76;
+      bees, 114, 115;
+      carrion, 97;
+      cocoons, 100;
+      gophers, 136;
+      grubs, 12, 13, 111;
+      insects, 4, 6, 7, 16, 31, 36, 82, 91, 101, 150, 160;
+      lizards and toads, 99;
+      pepper berries, 197, 198, 201;
+      rats and mice, 137;
+      scale, 103;
+      seeds, 93, 162;
+      snakes, 132;
+      spiders, 31;
+      worms, 12, 13, 57, 164, 182, 185, 186, 190.
+    flight, 5, 7, 16, 17, 24, 30, 81, 91, 98, 99, 103, 115, 118, 147,
+        149, 153, 156, 161, 166, 168, 184, 195, 196, 197, 209.
+    friendliness when not disturbed, 10, 13, 23, 30, 40, 42, 45, 53,
+        59, 61, 64, 67, 83, 86, 89, 92, 95, 97, 100, 105, 126, 128,
+        129, 144, 148, 150-151, 153, 158, 171, 178, 180, 182-183, 185,
+        186, 197, 200, 201, 204.
+    legends about, 11, 105.
+    local names,--
+      blue jay, 6;
+      burrowing owl, 11;
+      bush-tit, 56;
+      California towhee, 92.
+    neighborly relations, 13, 25, 45-48, 49, 57-61, 62, 80, 86, 96,
+        100, 108, 115, 116, 124, 125, 126, 130, 138, 147, 171-174,
+        189-193, 204-205, 208-209.
+    nervousness, 9, 11, 22, 26, 34, 35, 42, 47, 53, 56, 61, 63, 64,
+        67, 70, 76, 81, 82, 87, 88, 97, 105, 117, 138, 139, 156,
+        166, 177, 180, 191, 208, 218.
+
+  Blackbird, Brewer's, 86-88, 117, 128.
+    afraid of a bath, 16.
+    attacking hawks and owls, 135, 139.
+    a jolly colony, 123, 124.
+    building, 124.
+    common in valley, 92.
+    curiosity about road-runner, 100.
+    following plow for grubs, 12, 13.
+    nervousness at nest, 87-88.
+    nesting sites, 86, 124.
+    pranks, 124.
+    repulsing shrike, 124, 125.
+    ruling dooryard, 86.
+
+  Blackbird, Red-winged, 14.
+    eating grubs in vineyard, 12-13.
+    following plow, 13.
+    nesting in marsh, 118.
+
+  Blackbird, Rusty, 86.
+
+  Blackbird, Yellow-headed,
+    in vineyard, 13-14.
+    on mustard, 14.
+
+  Blackbirds, 15, 114, 118, 120.
+    flocks riding cattle, hogs, and horses, 14.
+
+  Bluebird, Mexican, 187.
+    nesting site, 185.
+    second nest, 186.
+
+  Blue Jay. See Jay.
+
+  Blue Squawker. See Jay.
+
+  Brown Chippie. See Towhee, California.
+
+  Bunting, Indigo, 81.
+
+  Bunting, Lazuli, 81-83, 123, 189-193.
+    call, 190.
+    keeping out of quarrel, 45-46.
+    nest, 82, 216-217.
+    nesting site, 27, 82, 216.
+    song, 6, 44, 83, 117.
+    taking insects to nest, 82.
+    young fed by wren-tit, 189, 190.
+
+  Bush-tit, California, 28, 56, 59, 103-111, 117, 161, 162, 166.
+    building, 105-107, 108, 110, 184.
+    call notes, 109, 110.
+    common bird, 103.
+    destroys olive scale, 103.
+    legend of firefly lamps, 105.
+    local name, 56.
+    nest, 103, 104, 105.
+    nesting site, 103.
+    nest roof falls in, 106.
+    second nest better built, 107, 109.
+    snake in nest, 108.
+
+  Butcherbird. See Shrike.
+
+  Butterflies, migrating, 160.
+
+
+  California, southern, 147.
+    colors, 212.
+    marsh in, 118.
+    natural irrigation, 21.
+    sky, 67.
+
+  Canello, 2.
+    afraid of boggy land, Mexicans, and rattlesnakes, 2-3, 127-128.
+    indifferent to water snakes, 15.
+    made nervous by hummingbird, 7.
+    miring, 17-19.
+    visiting feathered tenants with, 123-139.
+
+  Chaparral, 5, 6, 55, 61, 94, 100, 103-104, 159, 167, 197, 201.
+
+  Chaparral cock. See Road-runner.
+
+  Chat, long-tailed, 163.
+
+  Chewink. See Towhee.
+
+  Chickadee, 103, 176.
+
+  Coast Mountains, 1, 4, 6, 15, 102, 104, 112, 113.
+    valley in, 1, 2, 4, 5, 20, 112.
+    at morning, 5, 68, 112, 137.
+    in evening, 19, 101, 102, 121, 122.
+    under moonlight, 102.
+
+  Coyote wolves,
+    barking, 91, 102.
+    chasing a dog, 119.
+    in eucalyptus, 214.
+
+  Crow,
+    killed bee-bird, 92.
+    nest, 212.
+
+
+  Dove, Mourning, 21, 118, 141, 161, 169, 219.
+    a gentle pair, 166.
+    brooding, 67.
+    friendliness, 42, 45.
+    nest, 216.
+    nesting site, 40, 166, 216.
+    perches, 57, 160.
+    superior airs of male, 116, 117.
+    timidity, 41, 42.
+    trailing, 215.
+
+
+  Eagle, 13.
+
+  Egret, White, 17.
+
+
+  Finch, Western House, 117, 160.
+    avoids shrike neighborhood, 126.
+    bathing, 16.
+    courtship, 90.
+    common birds, 92.
+    discussions, 28.
+    examining wren's nest, 25.
+    implicated in tragedy, 171-174.
+    nesting sites, 90, 96, 172, 186.
+    songs, 90.
+    stealing wren's material, 171.
+    using swallow's nest, 96.
+
+  Flicker, Red-shafted, 136-137, 160.
+    building, 136.
+    nesting site, 27, 136.
+    notes, 136.
+    works as if wound up, 136.
+
+  Flowers and Plants,
+    blue sage, 61, 147.
+    chilicothe, 168.
+    dodder, 89-90.
+    'fly flower,' 160.
+    forget-me-not, 128.
+    mallow, 128.
+    mustard, 14, 67, 119, 123, 127, 147.
+    on border of pond, 15.
+    poison oak, 167.
+    'poppy,' 160.
+    primrose, 69, 147.
+    wild celery, 120.
+    wild gooseberry, 147.
+
+  Flycatcher, 140.
+    in chaparral, 6.
+
+  Fog, 19, 68, 101, 112.
+
+
+  Goldfinch, 21, 44, 164, 215, 219.
+    feeding, 7.
+    nest, 23.
+    nest destroyed, 27.
+    nesting site, 184, 186.
+    note, 215.
+
+  Gnatcatcher, Western, 38-64, 81, 123, 161, 205.
+    building, 48-60, 61, 62.
+    calls, 43, 44, 45.
+    comical parents, 63, 64.
+    defending nest, 45, 57, 58.
+    egg broken by wren-tit, 46.
+    eggshell carried away, 46.
+    feeding young in new way, 63-64.
+    jaunty nervous manners, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 56, 63.
+    nest, 39, 41, 60, 168.
+    nesting site, 39, 48, 60, 61, 167.
+    nest moved, 60.
+    spelling each other, 43, 44, 62.
+    talkative, 41.
+
+  Gophers, 70, 136.
+
+  Grosbeak, Black-headed,
+    migrants, 8, 58.
+    song, 170.
+
+  Grosbeak, Blue, 120.
+
+
+  Hangbird. See Bush-tit.
+
+  Hawk, Buteo, building, 135.
+    more likely to eat gophers than birds, 136.
+
+  Hawk, Fish, 13.
+
+  Hawk, Sparrow, 131-135, 136.
+    chased by bee-bird, 91.
+    nesting site, 131.
+    snakes for breakfast, 132.
+    too small a front door, 131-134.
+
+  Hawks, 16, 86.
+
+  Heron, Green, 17.
+
+
+  Lark, Horned,
+    on roadsides, 10.
+    song, 10.
+
+  Horse, as help in observing, 3-4, 125, 201-204.
+
+  How-do-you-do Owl. See Owl, Burrowing.
+
+  Hummingbird, 147, 186.
+
+  Hummingbird, Black-chinned, 23-25, 147-158, 161, 202, 217-219.
+    around flowers by house, 88.
+    attacking horse and rider, 7.
+    building, 149-155.
+    call, 153.
+    courtship dance, 149.
+    enter house, 89.
+    feeding from primroses, 69.
+    feeding young, 23, 24, 155, 217.
+    help in cross-fertilization, 150.
+    nest, 23.
+    nest destroyed, 26.
+    nesting sites, 23, 89, 130, 147-148, 155, 158, 161, 217-218.
+    perch, 57, 167.
+    probing tobacco-tree flowers, 88.
+    tremulous moulding, 152.
+
+  Hummingbird, Rufous, 147.
+    around wild gooseberries, 147, 168.
+    song, 168.
+
+
+  Irrigation, natural, 21, 38, 159-160.
+
+
+  Jay, California, 59, 61, 84-85, 105, 123, 160, 161.
+    disciplining young, 85.
+    frightening small birds, 28, 58, 60, 84, 141.
+    local name, 6.
+    protecting young, 85.
+    scream, 169, 184.
+    tender to young, 84, 85.
+
+
+  Kingbird,
+    Arkansas. See Bee-bird.
+    Cassin's. See Bee-bird.
+    Eastern, 91.
+
+
+  Linnet. See Finch.
+
+  Lions, colts killed by, 30.
+
+  List of Birds referred to, ix.
+
+  List of Illustrations, vii.
+
+  Lizards, as eggers, 28, 150, 200, 203.
+
+
+  Magpie, 51, 98.
+
+  Mexican bridle, 3.
+
+  Miring, 17-19.
+
+  Mockingbird, thrasher's resemblance to, 6.
+
+  Mountain Billy, 20.
+    a good lope, 42-43, 112.
+    a narrow escape, 120.
+    a petted companion, 165, 187.
+    carrying blue gum boughs, 211.
+    carrying a chair, 60-61.
+    enjoying blue gum grove, 214, 218.
+    frightened by deer, 28-30.
+    ignoring snakes, 187-188.
+    improving his time, 68, 69, 114.
+    inventing a fly brush, 54, 55.
+    rolling, 165-166.
+
+  Mutual help in nature, 150.
+
+
+  Nesting season, date in southern California, 21, 30, 67, 69, 86.
+
+  Nests, broken up, 10, 26, 27, 47, 127, 143, 145, 158, 172, 204,
+        206, 217.
+    building, hard work, 56, 60, 107.
+    building methods, 49-50, 52-54, 82, 107, 108, 109, 127, 135,
+        136, 142, 150-154, 158, 175, 199, 200, 203, 204, 205-206, 207.
+    defective building (?), 106.
+    excessive amount of material, 96, 107, 108.
+    knothole entrance too small, 131.
+    materials of first nest used in second, 60, 107, 109-110, 154.
+    moved to safer place, 60, 154.
+    odd situations, 9, 95, 130, 171.
+    protective coloration, 82, 90, 144, 150.
+    rapid building, 108, 206.
+    second, 48 (?), 60, 107, 154, 186.
+    snakes in, 108.
+    third (?), 60.
+    time taken to build, 60.
+    unusual materials, 14, 89, 90.
+
+
+  Observing, 1, 2, 40, 60-61, 66, 67, 68, 81, 82, 109, 114, 123,
+        130, 135, 139, 141, 166, 195, 196, 197, 198, 201-205, 215.
+    assisting in nest building, 97, 109-110, 175-183.
+    delight of finding a new bird, 13.
+    proportion of birds identified without a gun, 2, 140.
+    temptations in, 92, 93, 194.
+
+  Oden Canyon, 159-160.
+
+  Oregon Robin, 20.
+
+  Oriole, 27, 104, 130, 131.
+
+  Oriole, Arizona Hooded,
+    building, 89.
+
+  Oriole, Bullock's, 162.
+    attacking an owl, 139.
+    nest, 117.
+    song flight, 184.
+
+  Owl, 105, 215-216.
+    asleep in window, 137.
+    diet of rats and mice, 137.
+    hiding in wells and mining shafts, 137, 138.
+
+  Owl, Barn,
+    an old crone, 139.
+    nesting site, 139.
+
+  Owl, Burrowing, 119, 212.
+    battles with a collie, 11, 12.
+    feeding young, 11, 12.
+    nest not shared with rattlesnakes, 11.
+    screws head off, 11.
+
+  Owl, Western Horned,
+    devices to protect young, 8, 9.
+    mobbed by neighbors, 138.
+
+
+  Pewee, Wood, 161-162.
+    building, 57, 59, 61.
+    nesting site, 57, 60.
+    nest moved, 60.
+    perch, 62, 161.
+
+  Phainopepla, 194-210.
+    a distinguished bird, 194.
+    building (done by male), 199, 203, 204, 205, 206.
+    call, 205.
+    eating pepper berries in door-yard, 197.
+    nest, 205.
+    nesting site, 199.
+    song, 205.
+
+  Phœbe, Black, 115, 128-130, 189.
+    brooding under a pump, 129.
+    in the hen-house, 130.
+    nest, 130.
+    nesting site, 117, 128-129, 130.
+
+  Pipit, American, 16.
+
+  Pond, made by spring rains,
+    rendezvous of birds, 5, 14-17.
+
+  Poor-will, Dusky,
+    call, 101-102.
+    flycatching, 101.
+
+
+  Quail, Valley,
+    call, 5.
+    flight of covey, 30.
+    in chaparral, 55.
+    in vineyard, 73.
+    tracks, 43.
+
+
+  Rabbit,
+    cottontail, 94, 118, 164.
+    jack, 5, 29, 94-95, 97.
+
+  Road-runner, 98-101.
+    around ranch-house, 100.
+    drowned in windmill tanks, 100.
+    eating with hens, 100.
+    fleetness, 98.
+    hunting cocoons, 100.
+    love call, 101.
+    nest, 99, 216.
+
+  Robin, 8, 92.
+
+
+  Shrike, White-rumped, 124-127, 128.
+    absence of birds in neighborhood, 126.
+    building, 125, 126-127.
+    gentle at nest, 125, 126.
+    invading blackbird premises, 124-125.
+    nest, 125.
+    nesting site, 125, 127.
+
+  Snakes,
+    gopher, 43, 71, 120, 187-188.
+    racer, 108.
+    rattle, 43, 120, 121, 203.
+    ringed, 55.
+    water, 15.
+
+  Sparrow, 15.
+
+  Sparrow, Golden-crowned, 16.
+
+  Sparrow, Song, 21, 22, 117.
+    nest, 83-84.
+    young, 83.
+
+  Sparrow, White-crowned, 16, 162.
+
+  Squirrels, ground, 11.
+
+  Swallow, 96.
+
+  Swallow, Eave,
+    drinking on wing, 17.
+    getting mud for nests, 16-17.
+    nests on sycamore, 114.
+
+
+  Tanager, Louisiana, 27.
+    a brilliant stranger, 131.
+
+  Thrasher, California, 163-164.
+    digging with sickle-shaped bill, 163-164.
+    in chaparral, 6.
+    song, 6, 169.
+    straight bills of young, 164.
+
+  Titmouse, Plain, 141, 184, 175-183.
+    building, 175-182.
+    gladly accepts feathers, 177.
+    needs no horsehair or straw, 179-181.
+    nesting sites, 175.
+    song, 175.
+
+  Tit, Wren-, 57, 60, 62, 189-193.
+    breaking up gnatcatcher's nest, 45, 46, 48.
+    skulking manners, 49, 59.
+    song, 6, 169.
+    usurping a mother's rights, 189-193.
+
+  Towhee, California, 28, 46, 47, 57, 58, 59, 92-95, 163, 189, 200.
+    call note, 92.
+    common and tame, 92.
+    nesting, 93, 94.
+    shy at nest, 93-94.
+    song, 93.
+
+  Towhee, Green-tailed, 162-163.
+
+  Towhee, Spurred, 18, 160, 162.
+    singing, 169.
+
+  Trade wind, 68-69.
+
+  Trees,
+    acacia, 189.
+    elder, 15.
+    eucalyptus, 211-220;
+      character of, 213-214, 219-220;
+      grove, 211-220;
+      raised for fuel, 211.
+    live-oaks, 5, 6, 21, 86, 159-170;
+      garden of, 159-160, 170;
+      sapped by mistletoe, 167.
+    pepper, 197.
+    sycamore, 15, 21, 24-25, 67, 68;
+      the big, 112-122, 159.
+    tobacco, 88.
+    willow, 123.
+
+  Turkey Buzzard. See Vulture.
+
+  Turtle Dove. See Dove.
+
+  Twin Oaks Canyon, 5-6, 159.
+
+
+  Ughland Canyon, 21, 38, 123, 159.
+
+
+  Vineyard, birds eating grubs in, 12-13.
+
+  Vireo, Hutton's, 140-146.
+    a devoted pair, 142.
+    building, 142, 145.
+    call note, 145.
+    fond of nest, 143, 145.
+    nest, 144.
+    nesting site, 141, 144.
+
+  Vireo, Least,
+    song, 6, 44, 169.
+
+  Vireo, Warbling, 27, 59.
+    building, 56.
+    scolding jay, 60.
+
+  Vulture, Turkey, 16, 97-98, 162.
+    circle over fighting snakes, 97.
+    eating woodpecker, 70.
+    eating skunk, 201.
+    queer attitude, 98.
+    scavenger, 97.
+    soaring, 97, 98.
+
+
+  Warbler, 160.
+    migrants, 6, 7, 123.
+
+  Waxwing, 69.
+
+  Whip-poor-will. See Poor-will.
+
+  Woodpecker, California, 65-80, 81, 123.
+    building, 28.
+    flycatching, 160.
+    hunting ground distant from nest, 69.
+    long intervals in feeding, 69.
+    lying in wait for prey, 141.
+    nesting site, 28, 71.
+    notes, 69.
+    old birds poisoned (?), 70.
+    rescuing the young, 71-73.
+    young orphans, inherited instincts, 75, 76, 78, 79;
+      notes, 78.
+
+  Woodpecker, Red-headed, 66, 69.
+
+  Wood rat,
+    in chaparral, 55.
+
+  Wren, 9-10.
+
+  Wren, Vigors's, 170-174.
+    linnets quarreling over materials, 171.
+    nesting site, 171.
+    young buried alive by linnets (?), 172-174.
+
+  Wren, Western House, 20-37, 65, 67, 69, 81, 84, 112, 117, 123, 160,
+        219.
+    building, 22, 25, 30, 96, 128.
+    common birds, 95.
+    feeding young on insects, 31.
+    nesting takes six weeks, 35.
+    nests in sycamore holes, 22, 128.
+    odd nesting sites, 95.
+    song, 22, 30, 96, 97.
+    tremulous motion of wings, 30, 33.
+
+
+  Yellow-bird. See Goldfinch.
+
+  Young birds,
+    Bluebird, 185.
+    Brewer's Blackbird, 87.
+    Burrowing Owl, 11-12.
+    Bush-tit, 28, 110, 111.
+    California Jay, 85.
+    California Woodpecker, 69-80.
+    feather tracts, 79.
+    fed at long intervals, 155.
+    fed on insects, 31, 36, 76, 82.
+    first flights, 36, 73-74, 88, 156.
+    Gnatcatchers, 63-64.
+    Horned Owl, 9.
+    Hummingbird, 23, 24, 88, 155-157, 217, 219.
+    interest in each other, 78, 79.
+    Lazuli Bunting, 189-193, 217;
+      adopted by wren-tit, 189-193.
+    Mourning Dove, 47.
+    Owl, 137.
+    Sparrow Hawk, 135;
+      subdued on leaving nest, 36;
+      time kept in nest, 69.
+    Titmouse, 182-183.
+    Vigors's Wren, 171, 172, 174.
+    Western House Wren, 33-37.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+  Bee-birds, 13.
+
+  Blackbird, Brewer's, 13.
+
+  Buntings, Lazuli (old and young), 189.
+
+  Bush-tits (birds and nest), 104.
+
+  Bush-tit (nest in oak), 108.
+
+
+  Chewink, California (head), 93.
+
+  Chewink, Eastern (head), 93.
+
+  Chewink, Green-tailed (head), 163.
+
+
+  Eucalyptus Avenue, showing pollarded trees, 212.
+
+  Eucalyptus Wood stored for Market in a Eucalyptus Grove, 214.
+
+
+  Gnatcatcher, Western (birds and nest), 39.
+
+  Grosbeak, Black-headed (head), 8.
+
+  Grosbeak, Rose-breasted (head), 8.
+
+
+  Hummingbird, Black-chinned (nest), 157.
+
+  Hummingbird, Black-chinned (on nest), 148.
+
+
+  Mountain Billy Deserted, 220.
+
+  Mountain Billy under the Gnatcatcher's Oak, frontispiece.
+
+
+  Oaks, Live, 160.
+
+  Oriole, Arizona Hooded (head), 89.
+
+  Oriole, Baltimore, Eastern (head), 89.
+
+
+  Phainopepla's Nest in Oak Brush, 198.
+
+  Phainopeplas on Pepper-tree, 194.
+
+  Phœbe, Black (head), 129.
+
+  Phœbe, Eastern (head), 129.
+
+
+  Quail, Valley, 99.
+
+
+  Road-runner, 99.
+
+
+  Sycamores, Along the Line of, 124.
+
+  Sycamore, The Big, 114.
+
+
+  Titmouse, Plain (at nest), 176.
+
+
+  Valley in Coast Mountains, 4.
+
+
+  Woodpecker, California, (head), 66.
+
+  Woodpecker, California (young), 78.
+
+  Woodpecker, Red-headed, Eastern (head), 66.
+
+  Wren-tit, 189.
+
+  Wren, Vigors's (at nest), 173.
+
+  Wren, Western House, 32.
+
+  Wren, Western House (singing), 20.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 33, "delighful" changed to "delightful" (It was delightful)
+
+Page 75, "formicivorous" changed to "formicivorus" (Melanerpes
+formicivorus)
+
+Page 190, "non-commital" changed to "non-committal" (non-committal air)
+
+Page 190, "eeding" changed to "feeding" (feeding it, especially)
+
+Page 257, "2" changed to "216" (nesting site, 40, 166, 216.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A-Birding on a Bronco, by Florence A. Merriam
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