BIRDS OF THE REGION 157 



A brilliant rose-colored male Cooper tanager was seen 

 in the oak trees near the spring on April 24, gleaning 

 among the oak blossoms while waiting for warmer 

 weather up in the Guadalupe or Sacramento mountains, 

 where he finds congenial breeding grounds in company 

 with his duller relative, the hepatic tanager, and the 

 richly varied mountain or Louisiana tanager. 



There is little attraction for swallows about the 

 cave, but along the river valleys barn, bank, and white- 

 bellied and violet green swallows are common, at least in 

 migration, while the cliff swallows were found building 

 mud nests on the cliffs in Dark Canyon, a few miles 

 north of the cave. 



White-rumped shrikes are fairly common along the 

 roadside fences, where they sit and watch for prey. A 

 few were seen on the ridge near the cave. One ob- 

 served pecking and pounding at something on the 

 ground at the edge of a wood-rat house was driven 

 away, when a half-grown wood rat was picked up with 

 its skull broken by the bill of the butcher-bird. 



Western mockingbirds are found all over the cave 

 country, and on every bright spring morning when I 

 opened my cabin door they were heard singing from the 

 tops of tall yuccas and cactus bushes. Their old nests 

 were found in cactus or thorn bushes, in many cases 

 far from any permanent supply of water. 



The curve-billed thrashers (Figs. 53 and 56) were first 

 seen near the cave on March 20, and thereafter were 

 common and one of the richest scngsters of the region. 

 Many of their old stick nests, larger, coarser, and 

 rougher than the nests of mockingbirds 3 were found in 



