DESERT BIRD LIFE—OBERHOLSER. 861 
drifting sand until it rises into dunes and even at length com- 
pletely covers the vegetation within. Among these sandy heaps the 
curious long-tailed kangaroo rats hold nightly revels, watched, or 
perhaps joined, by the humbler pocket mice. By day, after his 
springtime return, the shy little black-throated sparrow, nothing 
daunted by his cheerless environment, flits about in the bushes or on 
the ground, chirping contentedly the while. Then, after he has found 
his mate, and the cosy little nest is growing in the midst of yonder 
shrub, he gives expression to his happiness in a song of quaint, sweet, 
tinkling notes that are strangely attractive and far-carrying in the 
still air of these desolate surroundings. Into these sandy wastes 
comes also the horned lark, here as everywhere throughout the Great 
Basin a frequent and characteristic figure. Singly, in pairs, or in 
small companies, it seeks the more open places among the dunes and 
the brush, and roams the stony or bare sun-baked plains, venturing 
at times even out upon the wide level wastes of snowy-white alkali 
that covers in places the hard, heat-seamed clay soil, where scarcely 
another living thing appears, and nothing meets the eye but the 
blazing sky, the hazy, quivering atmosphere, and the barren land- 
scape. Into such a furnace even the hardy desert inhabitants might 
well enter with timidity; but heat and aridity alike seem little to 
appall this pretty lark, for as it runs to and fro on the ground, or 
circles in towering flight like its cousin, the skylark, its cheerful twit- 
tering song appears to be just as happily an expression of its con- 
tentment here as in the beautiful, green, flower-strewn meadows of 
the far-away eastern country. From what few enemies it may have 
it is well protected by the colors of its plumage, whose browns and 
grays blend so perfectly and so marvelously with the surroundings, 
wherever in the desert the bird may chance to be, that to disappear 
from sight it has only to remain at rest. 
The low rocky hills, with their scant vegetation of small shrubs, 
which rise beyond the sand dunes, lack but little of being as un- 
inviting as the plains, yet the sprightly rock wren claims them as 
his own particular abode. Among the rocks, bowlders, and little 
ledges he may be found busy and active, and, though alert, not over- 
shy or suspicious. If started up from work or rest his quick, jerky 
flight to the nearest point of observation preludes a sharp, harsh 
note of interrogation and alarm, almost startling in its suddenness 
and volume, which degenerates into a prolonged sputtering scold, 
as the bird works himself into a ridiculous frenzy of voice and of 
action over what he doubtless regards as a wholly unwarranted and 
quite reprehensible intrusion. But his is an acquaintance that may 
well be cultivated, for once we are in his confidence he is found to 
be more than ordinarily interesting; he will sing for us, and this 
