YELLOW-BILLED MAGPIES 



warbler, even, could not detain me. Perhaps it 

 would be there when I returned. If not, no mat- 

 ter. It was probably a lutescent warbler, I knew 

 afterward, when I could spare my wits to con- 

 sider the matter. For the minute I could think 

 of only one thing ; there was only one thing 

 that I wanted to see, a black-and-white bird 

 with a long tail and a yellow bill. 



Up the ravine I went, and still no sign. Hope 

 was growing less, my spirits less exuberant. 

 Then I came within sight of a distant shanty in 

 a clearing, and recalled our German friend's cau- 

 tion. Even yet there was a chance. Across the 

 wide grassy field I hastened, and up to the house, 

 which turned out to be inhabited, a thing I should 

 have deemed impossible. Nobody was in sight, 

 but I could hear a Mexican or Spanish woman 

 crooning to her baby as she rocked it to sleep. 



I took my station near the corner of the house, 

 in the shade of a cypress tree, and waited. Min- 

 utes passed, — five minutes, ten minutes, — and 

 no magpie, nor any sound of one. And then, be- 

 fore I knew it, my eye was on the bird. She (I 

 suppose it was she) was coming up from the bot- 

 tom of the valley, a few rods off, bringing her 

 tail behind her ; and in her yellow bill she held 

 a stick. She was building a nest! True enough, 

 she flew to the top of the nearest oak, a solitary 

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