A FLYCATCHER AND A SPARROW 



I BELIEVE I have seen two of the oddest birds in 

 Texas the road-runner and the scissor-tailed 

 flycatcher. The first was mentioned some time 

 ago in these letters ; the second I have but lately 

 met with. When I was in San Antonio in Jan- 

 uary, he was absent for the winter. He would 

 return, I was informed, shortly after the middle 

 of March, and I have kept it fast in mind that I 

 must stop here on my way home and make his 

 acquaintance. 



I knew he was odd, but he has turned out to be 

 odder even than I supposed. Other places, other 

 birds, as a matter of course, but surely this one, 

 to use Emerson's word, is the " otherest." When 

 I saw him first, in San Pedro Park (everything 

 is saintly in the Southwest), I thought for an 

 instant that I was looking at a bird which had 

 seized a long string, or a strip of cloth, and was 

 flying away with it to his nest. Seen more fully, 

 he looked, I said to myself, like a Japanese kite, 

 or some other outlandish plaything. Even now, 

 when he has been in sight pretty constantly 

 for five or six days, I can hardly say that he 



