PRACTICAL ORNITHOLOGY IN ARIZONA 115 



time, nearly all the explorers of the Southwest have also met 

 with the bird, and recorded the impressions it left upon them — 

 among whom may be mentioned Woodhoiise, Heerraann, Xan- 

 tus. Cooper, Aiken, Ridgway, and Henshaw, all well known in 

 connection with the ornithology of this very interesting region. 

 Whilst living at Fort Whipple, I frequently came upou little 

 troops of these Titmice, especially in the winter-time — my note- 

 book is silent for the summer months, but I never doubted 

 their permanence in that vicinity. Nearly all of us who have 

 had anything to say about the birds speak of their fondness for 

 the tracts of conntry which are covered with scrubby evergreen 

 oaks; in my "Prodrome" 1 called it " emphatically an ever- 

 green oak species, eschewing the pines, and frequenting the 

 open hill-sides" — a correct statement, though not a model of 

 literary handicraft. There was, and for aught I know to the 

 contrary" there still may be, a large patch of oaks just back of 

 the fort, where I was almost sure to find these Titmice at 

 any time during a portion of the year. This scrubby hillside, 

 by the way, was a favorite resort of mine, not so much for what 

 I expected to find there in the ornithological line, as for what 

 I very sincerely hoped not to find in the way of the aborigines — 

 for it was in full view of the fort, and much safer than the 

 ravines on either side, where I have gone more than once to 

 bring in the naked and still bleeding bodies of men killed by 

 the Apaches. This was in 1864-"G5, when the worst passions 

 of both Red and White men were inflamed by atrocities ex- 

 changed in kind, and when practical ornithology in Arizona 

 was a very precarious matter, always liable to sadden inter- 

 ruption, and altogether too spicy for comfort. In the course 

 of this volume, I shall probably indulge in some reminiscences 

 of this sort, at times when I feel in the humor, or when I for- 

 get what I ought to say about this or that bird; for, according 

 to the simplest laws of association, my memory of many Ari- 

 zona birds — in fact, my whole notion of the lives of some of 

 them — is i)ervaded with local color. The recollections of a 

 decade ago make a crowded and strangely jumbled picture, in 

 which the high lights rest on many an interesting bird, while 

 the swarthy savage crouches in the shadow of the background. 

 They tell me things are better now — that the trails are seldom 

 blood-staiued: iu some states of the social atmosphere, a 

 thunder-shower, with leaden rain, clears up the sky ; and so it 

 proved in this case. 

 In studying the habits of Gambel's Titmouse, surnamed " the 



