BIRDS OF THE ARID PLAIN 99 



pair of mountain bluebirds had chosen the village for 

 their summer residence, and were building a nest in 

 the coupler of a freight car standing on a side track. 

 The domicile was almost completed, and I could not 

 help feeling sorry for the pretty, innocent couple, at 

 the thought that the car would soon be rolling hun- 

 dreds of miles away, and all their loving toil would go 

 for naught. Bluebirds had previously been seen at the 

 timber-line among the mountains, and here was a pair 

 forty miles out on the plain — quite a range for this 

 species, both longitudinally and vertically. 



Durino; the forenoon the followina; birds were ob- 

 served : A family of juvenile Arkansas flvcatchers, 

 which were being fed by their parents ; a half-dozen or 

 more western grassfinches, trilling the same pensive 

 tunes as their eastern half-brothers ; a small, long-tailed 

 sparrow, which I could not identify at the time, but 

 which I now feel certain was Lincoln's sparrow ; these, 

 with a large marsh-harrier and a colony of clifF-swal- 

 lows, completed my bird catalogue at this place. It 

 may not be amiss to add that several jack-rabbits went 

 skipping over the swells ; that many families of prairie 

 dogs were visited, and that a coyotte galloped lightly 

 across the plain, stopping and looking back occasionally 

 to see whether he were being pursued. 



It was no difficult task to study the birds on the 

 plain. Having few hiding-places in a locality almost des- 



