desert ranch to watch for the grasshopper and the field-mouse. The 

 prairie falcon is a rare visitor. The great horned owl is the largest of his 

 tribe found in this locality. The long-eared owl, much smaller than the 

 foregoing bird, is not common, but has been seen. The little burrowing- 

 owl (or, more properly speaking, the ground owl) is always interesting. 



The road-runner is as much at home among mesquites and palo verdes 

 as with the oaks and chaparral of other parts of California. Woodpeckers 

 are not numerous, and many of them have to resort to the telegraph-poles 

 for family trees. The Texan and the Saint Lucas woodpeckers are both at 

 home on the sandy wastes. The night-hawk is found all over the desert and 

 in the foothills the poor-will lives. Swallows and swifts are numerous 

 during migration, but do not linger. A few hummingbirds visit the flowers 

 of spring. The flycatcher family is not numerous here, though several nest 

 occasionally, kingbirds among them. Rarely the brilliant vermilion fly- 

 catcher ("fire-head" his Latin name signifies) wanders in from Mexico or 

 Arizona and excites interest and admiration. The ash-throated flycatcher 

 nests wherever he can find a deserted woodpecker's hole, and perhaps helps 

 in the process of evacuation, if not eviction outright. 



Ravens are around the cliffs, and if you go into the mountains jays can 

 be seen. Pifion-birds wander from their mountain home down into the 

 junipers and nut-pines, and in local migrations sometimes visit even lower 

 altitudes. Blackbirds visit the cultivated fields and the barnyards, but are 

 not residents at all. A few sparrows and finches are found, the desert 

 sparrow and sage-sparrow most common, along with the housefinch or 

 linnet. 



Among song-birds the mocker of course leads, and his song is as sweet 

 from a cholla cactus or a "smoke-tree" as from an orange-tree nearer civil- 

 ization. Leconte thrasher and Crissol thrasher are near relatives of the 

 California thrasher, and are both fine singers. The former is a gray or drab 

 color, with dark tail and frequents the cactus-fields and the dry, sandy 

 washes grown up to smoke-trees. Crissol thrasher is darker — much like 

 the California thrasher — and loves the dense mesquite thickets. 



Wherever man settles and plants alfalfa there comes the meadowlark, 

 and while he sings less than elsewhere his notes are as sweet. The 

 Arizona hooded oriole and the Scott oriole are both found where the Wash- 

 ington fan-palm grows wild. Of wrens the most interesting is the cactus- 

 wren which builds the large retort-shaped nests in the cholla cactus. The 

 rock-wren makes his home among the rocks and the banks of dry sand 

 marshes. In the tops of the mesquite trees, eating the pink berries of the 

 mistletoe, is often seen an aristocratic-looking bird. His coat is shiny 

 black, he wears a tall crest, and shows a broad patch of snow white on 

 each wing as he flies. This is the phainopepla, whose name signifies 

 "shining robe," and is very appropriate. 



Among small birds the "wild canary" Is most numerous, for the term, 

 like charity, covers a multitude of sins. Any small bird with a dash of 

 yellow to him is forthwith called a canary, whether he be a yellow warbler, 

 yellowthroat, three kinds of goldfinch, verdin, or one of several others. 



In winter-time the robins come again, but not to nest. They put in their 

 time eating mistletoe-berries, and at the first hint of spring are off. The 

 same is true of the Arctic and the Western bluebird which spend a small 

 portion of their time here. 



IS 



