III. 



LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 



WHEN watching the little lover and his brood, 

 I heard familiar voices farther down the line of 

 oaks, voices of- little friends I had made on my 

 first visit to California, and had always remem- 

 bered with lively interest as the jauntiest, most 

 individual bits of humanity I had ever known in 

 feathers. So, when Mountain Billy and I could 

 be spared by the other bird families we were 

 watching, we set out to hunt up the little bluish 

 gray western gnatcatchers. 



The (sand) stream that widened under the 

 wren's sycamores narrowed up the canyon to a 

 dry ditch, I should say, if it were not disrespect- 

 ful to speak that way of a channel that once a year 

 carries a torrent which excavates canals in the 

 meadows. Billy and I started up this sand ditch, 

 so narrow between its weed-grown banks that 

 there was barely room for us, and so arched over 

 in places by chaparral that we could get through 

 only when Billy put dtiwn his ears and I bowed 

 low on the saddle. 



We had not gone far before we heard the gnat- 

 catchers, bluish gray mites with heads that are 



