BIRD NOTES AFIELD 



of her lord and master with all the pride and delight of a duti- 

 ful wife and a proud mother. Here indeed do we find that 

 life of rural simplicity for which we have so often sighed in 

 Tain! 



The western flycatcher does not have the canons all to him- 

 self these heydays in May. Snugly tucked away in a hole in 

 a rotten live-oak a pair of Vigor's wrens have made their home. 

 Higher up in another oak, where a limb has broken off, and the 

 water has trickled into the heart of the tree, leaving a small 

 cavity, a plain crested titmouse, dressed in her lead-colored 

 attire, is tending her numerous brood of young. Away off 

 among the bay trees that nestle in the upper part of the canon 

 a clamorous California jay is squawking in a harsh but alto- 

 gether good-natured sort of a way. Even he — noisy vaga- 

 bond that he is — knows the joy and sorrow of having a home 

 and family on his hands, though I fancy the cares do not weigh 

 Tery heavily upon him in the daily routine of his plundering, 

 rollicking life. Samuel's song-sparrow, too, has found a place 

 for her nest in the canon, in a wild tangle of blackberry vines 

 at one side of the road; but the crowning glory of nest archi- 

 tecture is concealed in the all-including limbs of the live-oak. 

 It is the home of the California bush-tit, the tiniest of all birds 

 except the hummers. A plain, mouse-colored little fellow is 

 the bush-tit, with a blithe, high-pitched lisp of a note, his wee 

 body ever in motion and his tiny heart ever in good cheer. He 

 is a sociable midget, generally traveling in bands of fifteen or 

 twenty, from one live-oak to another, gleaning among the leaves 

 for insects. 



But there are birds more splendid far thcin the quiet life 

 of domestic simplicity into which we have thus far had a 



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