270 TEXAS AND ARIZONA 



with a modest tinge of red upon her lower parts, 

 enough to mark the relationship was noticed 

 March 5. Males were now becoming common, 

 and on the 9th, although my walks covered no 

 very wide territory, I counted, of males and fe- 

 males together, seventeen. From first to last not 

 one was met with on the creosote and cactus- 

 covered desert, but after the first few days of 

 March they were well distributed over the Santa 

 Cruz and Rillito valleys and about the grounds 

 of the university. I found no nest until March 

 27, although at least two weeks earlier than that 

 a female was seen pulling shreds of dry bark from 

 a cottonwood limb, while her mate flitted about 

 the neighborhood, now here, now there, as if he 

 were too happy to contain himself. 



The prettiest performance of the male, wit- 

 nessed almost daily, and sometimes many times a 

 day, after the arrival of the other sex, was a sur- 

 prisingly protracted ecstatic flight, half flying, 

 half hovering, the wings being held unnaturally 

 high above the back, as if on purpose to display 

 the red body (a most peculiar action, by which 

 the bird could be told as far as he could be seen), 

 accompanied throughout by a rapid repetition of 

 his simple call ; all thoroughly in the flycatcher 

 manner ; exactly such a mad, lyrical outburst as 

 one frequently sees indulged in by the chebec, for 



