flowing with milk and honey, of cactus thorn and heather bloom, creosote-bush 

 and snow, such as are found in California, it is beyond the pen of the enthusiast 

 to exaggerate. It goes without saying that oological variety follows the same 

 lines, and that the working oologist enjoys the thrills of contrasts as vividly as 

 do the professional appreciators of things Californian. 



If the reader will join us, then, for a seven weeks' jaunt, we will taste 

 some of these contrasts, and we will agree to set out our choicest oological vin- 

 tages. Our party comprises the writer, and two assistants, William Oberlin 

 Dawson, aged 19, and Robert Canterbury, a lad of 17, already favorably known 

 to readers of the M. C. 0. Journal. Our route lies across the Mohave Desert 

 and along Owens Valley, "back of the Sierras/' to Mono Lake and, later, the 

 Mammoth Lakes, in southern Mono County, with a side excursion, on foot, to 

 the summit of the White Mountains, and several such to the higher ranges of 

 the Mammoth section. 



We set out at midday, May 16th, in a 50 h.p. automobile, with commo- 

 dious trailer; and we made camp near Palmdale, 125 miles away, in the midst 

 of a wierd tree-yucca forest on the edge of the Mohave Desert. If we had been 

 suddenly transported to Heaven the sense of difference could scarcely have been 

 greater. The bayonet-tipped leaves assured us that blood would still follow a 

 jab, as upon earth, and the Scott Oriole {Icterus parisorum) sang somewhat 

 after the fashion of mundane birds, albeit the tonal quality, limpid, chastened, 

 orphean, rather suggested fields of asphodel. We wandered in this qualified 

 Elysium through the early forenoon of May 7th, until the rising tide of heat 

 made further effort valueless; but we found ourselves too late for profitable bird 

 study — nesting, anyway — and had to be content with Scott Oriole, n/5, near 

 hatching, Western Kingbird, n/4, and Swainson Hawk, 1/4, fresh, the last-named 

 an elegant set retrieved from the crotch of a yucca some twelve feet up. 



The crossing of the desert was a bore after the tree-yucca had given way 

 to creosote or outright desolation. Yet the gods of the desert were good to us on 

 this as on all subsequent occasions, eight in all, when I have undertaken to cross 

 the Mohave section. I have never experienced a temperature of above 110 de- 



NESTING CLIFFS OF WHITE-THROATED SWIFT (Aeronautes melanoleucus) RED ROCK CANYON 



49 



