Vol. XXVIII] BaileY) A Drop of Four Thousand Feet. 219 



202. Passer domesticus. English Sparrow. — In 1882 we saw the 

 English Sparrows at Galveston and Houston. They came to Kerrville 

 on December 12, 1897, and came to stay. They nested at the ranch for 

 the first time in 1909, but were often here in the winter long before then. 



A DROP OF FOUR THOUSAND FEET. 



BY FLORENCE MERRIAM BAILEY. 



Our last mountain camp of the field season of 1906 was at 8500 

 feet in the New Mexico Mogollons. Even in New Mexico an 

 8500 foot camp after the middle of October is apt to be a trifle 

 chilly, so we pitched our tents on the warm slope of the canon 

 under the yellow pines, laying logs against the outside walls of the 

 tents to keep out the wind, and noting with satisfaction that there 

 was abundant fuel close at hand for big camp fires. A few rods 

 below the tents Willow Creek — a clear sparkling mountain brook 

 that heads the middle fork of the Gila — ran at the foot of a hand- 

 some fir and spruce wall whose crest at sunset caught the last 

 yellow light slanting across the forest. 



In the morning when the sun reached the trees in front of the 

 tent small voices would be heard and a flock of hardy mountaineers 

 — Chickadees, Pygmy Nuthatches, and Brown Creepers — would 

 fly in filling the air with their gentle talk. Beyond camp up the 

 narrow winding gulch of Willow Creek along which was kept a 

 line of small mammal traps, in the sunny bends of a morning 

 Chestnut-backed Bluebirds and Audubon Warblers would fly 

 before us and flocks of Juncos rise with a startled twitter and a 

 flash of white outer tail feathers. Some of the Juncos when 

 flying showed a band of pink along the sides and, as was proved 

 when our specimens reached the Biological Survey, representa- 

 tives of nearly every resident, migrant, or wandering Junco of 

 those mountains, including the Slate-colored, Intermediate, 

 Montana, Pink-sided, Ridgway's, and the Gray-headed, had 

 gathered in that particular gulch or its neighborhood on the 



