6 A-BIRDING ON A BRONCO. 



birds, and visited only by the children whose small 

 schoolhouse stood beside the giant twin oak from 

 which the valley post-office was named. Flocks 

 of migrating warblers were always to be found 

 here ; flycatchers shot out at passing insects ; 

 chewinks scratched among the dead leaves and 

 flew up to sing on the branches ; insistent vireos 

 cried tu-wMp' tit-whip' tu-wJiip' tvrwee'-ah, com- 

 ing out in sight for a moment only to go hunting 

 back into the impenetrable chaparral ; lazuli 

 buntings sang their musical round ; blue jays — 

 blue squawkers, as they are here called — went 

 screaming harshly through the thicket ; and the 

 clear ringing voice of the wren-tit ran down the 

 scale, now in the brush, now echoing from the 

 bowlder-strewn hills above. But the king of the 

 chaparral was the great brown thrasher. His 

 loud rollicking song and careless independent 

 ways, so suggestive of his cousin, the mocking- 

 bird, made him always a marked figure. 



There was one dense corner of the thicket 

 where a thrasher lived, and I used to urge Canello 

 through the tangle almost every morning for the 

 pleasure of sharing his good spirits. He was not 

 hard to find, big brown bird that he was, stand- 

 ing on the top of a bush as he shouted out boister- 

 ously, L'ick'-it-noio, hick'-it-now, shut' -up shut'-vp, 

 dor'-a-thy dor'-a-thy ; or, calling a halt in his mad 

 rhapsody, slowly drawled out, tclioa'-now, whod- 

 noiv. After listening to such a tirade as this, it 



