264 



Bird - Lore 



a companion. He stayed to be talked to as usual but the stranger ran off. 

 From that time on there seemed to be a difference. Koo was not getting senti- 

 mental, but spring was coming. 



One morning when the Mammalogist was several rods from camp near what 

 we took for a last year's Roadrunner nest, he heard a faint footfall on a leaf on 

 a terrace below him and caught sight of Koo's crested head bobbing as he 



KOO IN A HACKBERRY TREE 



trotted along. Being called, Koo stopped, turned, and came right up the trail 

 in the direction of the sound, and when he had skirted around the bushes until 

 he was able to see his old friend, he began making a new and curious note — low, 

 sibilant, and seething, suggestive of a courtship call. He kept this up when 

 he had seated himself on a branch two or three feet above the ground, and 

 humped up, with feathers loosely ruffled, facing the old nest, had all the inti- 

 mate suggestion of being at home. 



