CANYON WREN 279 



flowed gently over a wide, stony bed ; it was well shaded by gigantic 

 and picturesque sycamores and by enormous cottonwoods whose lofty, 

 spreading branches reminded us of our familiar New England elms. 

 A zone-tailed hawk had a nest in one of the cottonwoods and greeted 

 us with anxious cries. 



Early the next morning we were awakened by the melodious songs 

 of Arizona cardinals and by the Cassin's kingbirds' loud, striking 

 notes, "come here, come here," as they flitted about in the big white syca- 

 mores over our heads. Above our camp we found the canyon to be 

 heavily wooded with cottonwoods, sycamores, a variety of oaks, maples, 

 walnuts, and other trees, in which red-tailed and Cooper's hawks had 

 their nests. The sides of the canyons were rough and rocky, in some 

 places very steep or even precipitous, and more or less overgrown with 

 hackberries, thorns, mesquites, and mountainmisery, where these and 

 small giant cacti could find a foothold. We saw or heard a long list 

 of interesting birds, but the gem of them all was the canyon wren. Its 

 wild, joyous strain of sweet, silvery notes greeted us as we passed some 

 steep cliffs; they seemed to reverberate from one cliff to another, to 

 fill the whole canyon with delightful melody and to add a fitting charm 

 to the wild surroundings. 



The above is fairly typical of the haunts of this species, for most 

 observers seem to agree it is well named as a dweller on the cliffs 

 or the rocky slopes of the canyons, where it can dodge in and out among 

 the numerous cracks, crannies, and dark little caves. But it is not 

 wholly confined to such places and has even adapted itself to living 

 in human surroundings. George Finlay Simmons (1925) says that, 

 in Texas, it is found about "old rock buildings in towns ; less commonly, 

 about houses and barns." It is "common in and about the city of 

 Austin, and sings from the chimneytops with the Western Mocking- 

 birds and Texas Long-tailed Wrens." Keferring to this, Mrs. Bailey 

 (1902) remarks that "when they do, what cool, grateful canyon memo- 

 ries they awaken in the midst of the town ! When heard afterwards 

 on their own native canyon cliffs it seems impossible that they could 

 ever sing in a city, their song is so attuned to the wild mountain fast- 

 nesses." W. Leon Dawson (1923) writes : "There is no place forbidden 

 to a Canyon Wren, no rock wall which frights him, no tunnel's mouth, 

 nor intricacy of talus bed. He has no special predilection for the pic- 

 turesque, however, as his name might seem to imply. A brush pile 

 or a heap of old tin cans will do as well as a miner's cabin or an old 

 Mission." 



This race of the species has by far the widest range of any ot the 

 forms of the species ; and, if we eliminate punctulattbs ^ and poUopfilus, 

 as modern research seems to indicate that we should, conspersics inhab- 



1 See Grlnnell and Behle (1935) for reasons why G. m. punctulatus is synonymous with 

 conspersua. 



