A RARE BIRD. 197 



about. Day by day, on riding back to our ranch- 

 house, I found phainopeplas there eating the ber- 

 ries of the pepper-trees in our front yard. Before 

 long the birds began coming early in the morn- 

 ing ; their voices were the first sounds we heard 

 on awakening and almost the last at night, and 

 soon we realized the delightful fact that our trees 

 had become the feeding ground for all the phaino- 

 peplas of the valley. Altogether there were five 

 or six pairs. It was a pretty sight to see the 

 black satiny birds perched on one of the delicate 

 sprays of the willowy pepper-trees, hanging over 

 the grape-like clusters, to pluck the small pink 

 berries. The birds soon grew very friendly, and, 

 though they gave a cry of warning when the cats 

 appeared, became so tame they would answer 

 my calls and let me watch them from the piazza 

 steps, not a rod away. 



When they first began to linger about the house 

 we thought they were building near, and when 

 one flew into an oak across the road, almost gave 

 me palpitation of the heart by the suggestion. 

 But no nest was there, and when the bird flew 

 away it rose obliquely into the air perhaps a 

 hundred feet, and then flew on evenly straight 

 across to the small oaks on the farther side of a 

 patch of brush that remained in the centre of the 

 valley, known to the ranchmen as the ' Island.' 

 The flight looked so premeditated that the first 

 thing the next morning, although the phaino- 



