280 TEXAS AND ARIZONA 



man with birds in his eye can hardly fail to sight 

 them and name them, across the widest barley 

 field. 



One of the birds whose acquaintance I chiefly 

 wished to make on this my first Western jour- 

 ney was the famous canyon wren, famous not 

 for its beauty (beauty is not the wren family's 

 mark), but for its voice. Whether my wish 

 would be gratified was of course a question, es- 

 pecially as my very modest itinerary included 

 no exploration of canyons ; but I was not with- 

 out hope. 



I had been in Tucson nearly a week, when one 

 cool morning after a cold night (it was February 

 7) I went down into the Santa Cruz Valley and 

 took the road that winds where there is barely 

 room for it between the base of Tucson 

 Mountain and the river. Steep, broken cliffs, 

 perhaps a hundred feet high, were on my right 

 hand, and the deep bed of the shallow river lay 

 below me on my left. Here I was enjoying the 

 sun, and keeping my eyes open, when a set of 

 loud, clear bird notes in a descending scale fell 

 upon my ears from overhead. I stopped, pulled 

 myself together, and said, " A canyon wren." I 

 remembered a description of that descending 

 scale. The next instant a small hawk took wing 

 from the spot on the cliff whence the notes had 



