A BUNCH OF BRIGHT BIRDS 



ALMOST or quite the most brilliant bird that I 

 saw in Arizona was the vermilion flycatcher. I 

 had heard of it as sometimes appearing in the 

 neighborhood of Tucson, but entertained small 

 hope of meeting it there myself. A stranger, 

 straitened for time, and that time in winter, 

 blundering about by himself, with no pilot to 

 show him the likely places, could hardly expect 

 to find many besides the commoner things. So 

 I reasoned with myself, aiming to be philosophi- 

 cal. Nevertheless, there is always the chance of 

 green hand's luck ; I knew it by more than one 

 happy experience ; and who could tell what 

 might happen ? Possibly it was not for nothing 

 that my eye, as by a kind of magnetic attraction, 

 fell so often upon Mrs. Bailey's opening sentence 

 about this particular bird as day after day, on 

 one hunt and another, I turned the leaves of her 

 Handbook. " Of all the rare Mexican birds seen 

 in southern Arizona and Texas," so I read, " the 

 vermilion flycatcher is the gem." 



One thing was certain : this famous Mexican 

 rarity was not confusingly like anything else, 



