52 The Wilson Bulletin^No. 95 



walker, but in bearing maintains the characteristic dignity 

 and self-possession of his family. 



My acquaintance with him began in the field, where he was 

 found on the ranches and in the mountain valleys and also 

 about the alkaline lakes of California and New Mexico. Besides 

 watching him catch small crabs between incoming waves on 

 the Pacific and little crustaceans on alkaline lake borders in 

 the interior, we had seen migrating flocks swing in to roost 

 in the tules of a remote New Mexico lake, at times over- 

 looked by the tepees of the Apaches. Associating him with 

 such wilds, it was a surprise to find him a familiar lawn bird 

 in the cities of southern California, a bird as tame or tamer 

 than the eastern Robin, sometimes hardly caring to move 

 out of the way of passers-by. A still more surprising exhi- 

 bition of municipal domesticity was vouchsafed us in Red- 

 'lands. 



We were walking clown Cajon Street at sunset on Sep- 

 tember 6, 1907, when in passing a row of narrow Italian 

 cypresses about the height of the telephone poles, we were 

 startled by a horde of the Blackbirds bursting out of the 

 trees over our heads. When we had walked on, many of 

 them flew back, lighting on the telephone cables in front of 

 the trees, where their black forms were silhouetted against 

 the yellow sunset sky. With my mind preoccupied by meet- 

 ings in the field, in distant parts of the Sierra Nevada and of 

 New Mexico, it was little less than astonishing to find a roost 

 inside a populous city. Had the birds been Chimney Swifts 

 flying over the housetops to the mouth of a lofty chimney 

 where they could drop down inside protecting brick walls, 

 as they do in some eastern cities, it would not have seemed 

 so surprising, but here was a multitude of large, conspicuous 

 Blackbirds congregating in low trees close over a city side- 

 walk! Still, although men, women, and children, automo- 

 biles, and trolley cars were continually going by, the roost 

 was in a comparatively quiet part of town where the houses 

 were, spaced by orange groves, and the nearest residences 

 were across the street. 



