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Bird - Lore 



With the Field-Agents 

 BIRDS OF THE CACTUS COUNTRY 



By WILLIAM L. and IRENE FINLEY 

 Illustrated from photographs by the authors 



I HE desert is strict 

 and harsh with 

 her children. 

 Life is spent on 

 the march or in 

 the firing-line. 

 Nearly every- 

 thing is fortified 

 with thorns. 

 The cactus has 

 a panoply of 

 points to pro- 

 tect its soft, spongy interior; the mesquite, 

 thepalo-verde and the delicate white poppy, 

 clothe themselves in thorns. The pudgy 

 toad in our Oregon garden grows fat and 

 lazy, but he wouldn't last long in Arizona. 

 Out on the desert, Nature arms her toads 

 and lizards in thorns and scales. The toad 

 grows flat and thin, can run like a streak, 

 and digs a hiding-place in the sand. He 

 wears a crown of thorns, and is 

 really a lizard instead of a toad. 



Of all desert plants, the choUa- 

 cactus is the most treacherous, yet 

 it is the favorite nesting-place of 

 the Cactus Wren. The first of these 

 nests we saw was a gourd-shaped 

 bundle of fibers and grasses, with a 

 hallway running in from the side. 

 I couldn't look in, so I tried to 

 feel. I ran my hand in as far as I 

 could till the thorns about the 

 entrance pricked into my flesh. I 

 began to pull my hand back. The 

 more I pulled, the tighter the 

 thorns clung and the deeper they 

 pricked. I was in a trap. I reached 

 for my knife, and cut off some of 

 the thorns, but had to cringe and 

 let some of the others tear out. I 

 looked at them, but could see no 

 barbs; yet, when they enter the 

 flesh, one can readily believe that 

 they have tiny barbs, for it tears 

 the flesh to get them out. 



Several times we saw where birds had 

 hung themselves — the largest one an Inca 

 Dove. Later, we discovered a male House 

 Finch firmly impaled on a thorn; but the 

 most cruel incident occured at the nest in a 

 cholla of a Plumbeous Gnatcatcher, from 

 which the young birds had just departed. 

 One of the baby birds had hopped a few 

 inches from its home, and, making a mis- 

 step, had caught one wing on the treacher- 

 ous barb of a cholla branch. Struggling to 

 get away, it had entangled the other wing 

 and at the same time hooked itself in the 

 body and legs, and was helpless. It had 

 not been dead more than half an hour, and 

 the mother was fluttering about with food 

 for the unfortunate fledgling. 



These accidents led us to call the cholla 

 the worst danger to bird-life; but after we 

 had lived in Arizona for a while, we dis- 

 covered that this horrid cactus was the 



A VICTIM OF THE CHOLLA 



