12 



QHje Harbler 



orowths of willow, rose, buck-brush and poison oak. Herein lurk many- 

 birds ; and chiefly the Long-tailed Chat. Those creepy walks, through 

 occasional utter darkness, brought one into contact with sudden surprises. 

 At base of some spur of a side canyon a pair, or maybe even a trio, of male 

 Poor- Wills would make the canyon-walls throb with their symphonically 



iterated "Poor-will-(berj, — poor-will-(ber)" — poor-will-(ber)." Then, twenty 



steps later, from matted leafy mazes below you, at times not twenty feet away, 

 some Chat would bid,— "Werk"!— Then,-" Do-it,"— "Do-it,"— he would say: 



then, -"On " — (short i) — "dri" — ; then, maybe, — " Who-o-o, — who-o-o-, — 



who-o-o-," — in soft, measured, mocking cadences. 



A moment later, as you creep onward with the coke-smell borne down 

 into your nostrils on the soft night-wind, you are passing near a little cluster 

 of bull-pines, on the steep canyon-side. Suddenly there smites your ears, 

 from the pines over-head, a loud, clear, horn-like cry. It fairly lifts your 

 hat ; and you fall to wondering : is it an Owl, — you query ; or is it, maybe, 

 a wildcat? (And you are wondering about it yet). Then, instantly, up 

 pipes the Chat, — just one. (You may hear several at a time, though rarely 

 so) ; but they are always a hundred yards or more apart. Language is 

 powerless to interpret the sundry calls. These have a sort of mutual like- 

 ness, among different individual singers ; yet each has its own distinctions. 

 But a very few of my many notations is it worth while to spread upon this 

 page: Most common, most notable, of these is, — " Gurk"; another seems a 

 possible mime of the Robin's,— "Purp"; a third is, — "Wierd"; a fourth is a 

 compressed, deliberative, — "Huh", — "huh— "huh" — : a sort of sardonic 

 laughter. Really, I sometimes fall to wondering whether this apparently 

 sedate bin!, which is yet, nocturnally full of wierd, unusual, measured, un- 

 canny sound, is not really possessed of the Devil ! 



I have sought much and mightily for nests of the Long-tailed Chat ; 

 where nests were manifestly rather plenty. I have found just two nests: 

 (in use). 



The one of these had been suggested, the autumn before, by the find- 

 ing of the deserted nest-of-the-season ; now conspicuously crowning one out 

 of thousands in a little patch of roses, in a bend of the canyon-bottom. P>ut 

 it was late-June, the following summer, before I found the occupied nest. 



In Kansas, with the Common Chat, one has but to locate a peering, 

 garrulous male, strictly interested in one narrow zone of some dense copse : 

 and the nest of him is as-good-as found. But with the Long-tailed kind it 

 seems quite otherwise. My rose-patch was not so very-many times larger 

 than one's dining room. And yet, although I used to hide, two or three 

 times a week, in passing, where the song of the male betrayed the nest-near- 

 ness, it was no use. The song would be silenced. The female would never 

 put herself in evidence : (as the female of the Southern Chat almost al- 



