WINGED LIFE 



177 



with the species, so far as I can ascertain by ex- 

 periment, from 112 to 120 F. Consider that 

 blood temperature in connection with a sur- 

 rounding air varying from 100 to 125 F. ! It 

 would seem impossible for any life to support 

 it. One may well wonder what strange wings 

 beat this glowing air, what bird-life lives in this 

 fiery waste ! 



Yet the desert birds look not very different 

 from their cousins of the woods and streams 

 except that they are thinner, more subdued in 

 color, somewhat more alert. They are very 

 pretty, very innocent-looking birds. But we 

 may be sure that living here in the desert, en- 

 during its hardships and participating in its in- 

 cessant struggle for life and for the species, they 

 have just the same savage instincts as the plants 

 and the animals. The sprightliness and the 

 color may suggest harmlessness ; but the eye, 

 the beak, the claw are designed for destruction. 

 The road-runner is one of the mildest-looking 

 and most graceful birds of the desert, but the 

 spring of the wild cat to crush down a rabbit is 

 not more fierce than the snap of the bird's beak 

 as he tosses a luckless lizard. He is the only 

 thing on the desert that has the temerity to 

 fight a rattlesnake. It is said that he kills the 



