SONG BIRDS OF THE SOUTHWEST. 



"A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was, 

 Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye." 



"New birds, new flowers, new pleas- 

 ures," I murmur as my vision widens 

 upon the, to me, new world of Arizona. 

 A new delight indeed, notwithstanding 

 the often impressed fact that the old foot- 

 path-ways of Ohio are, 'after many years, 

 still but half discovered countries. But 

 'tis human, this desire for novelty, and I 

 am not at all in advance of my fellow kin- 

 dred in arriving at that stage of blessed 

 content which we see expressed upon 

 every side of us in the lives of the lesser 

 (?) creatures who abide without unrest 

 until compelled by the necessities of ne- 

 cessity to "move on." But I echo Richard 

 Jefferies : "a fresh flower, a fresh path- 

 way, a fresh delight," and am so far con- 

 tent ; and, truly, coming from the east of 

 living greens, 'tis a new kingdom of som- 

 ber mountains and sandy desert at which I 

 have arrived. To an imaginative person 

 it is a land filled with the echoes of a dis- 

 tant past, even now but half heard and in 

 my mind the golden glow of a day that is 

 dead enfolds the silent hills, a silence of 

 grandeur, not of nature which is here 

 alive and keen to the fullest extent. With 

 many other naturalists, I agree that if one 

 desires to learn the secrets of the field and 

 forest, one must go about singly and 

 alone. There is something strange about 

 it too, while one person alone is allowed 

 to see many of the inner movements of 

 wild life, when two or three are gathered 

 together, they seem to intimidate the 

 wood folk to an unlimited extent. 



But bird life in this far away territory, 

 notwithstanding Dr. Charles Abbott's ex- 

 perience to the contrary, seems to me to 

 be much more companionable and less 

 timid than in the more thickly populated 

 east, and also, bird curiosity is more no- 

 ticeable than in those states where genera- 

 tions of experience has obviated all desire 

 for any close scrutiny or investigation of 

 that queer biped without feathers. One 

 has only to sit silent and quiet for a few 

 moments to have his ornithological inter- 

 est aroused by numerous visitors, who, 

 with impatient "chips" and "twits" ques- 

 tion his presence among them. While 



Gila county makes up her quota of song 

 birds in quantity, she lacks something in 

 decorative quality, at least so far as col- 

 oring of plumage is concerned. There is. 

 no question but what the very arid at- 

 mosphere of this section is not without 

 its marked effect upon feather coloring, 

 and on account of this dullness of plum- 

 age, I was at first unable to classify 

 numbers of birds who were perfectly fa- 

 miliar to me in Ohio. Birds like the blue 

 jay lose much of the metallic gorgeous- 

 ness of their plumage and are under a 

 veil as it were, showing a dull, bluish 

 gray. The blackbirds also are decidedly 

 rusty in appearance, hardly holding their 

 own with the great glossy ravens (Cor- 

 vus principalis) who have so adapted 

 themselves to civilization as to have be- 

 come almost a necessity as purveyors of 

 edible refuse and debris which accumu- 

 lates in such abundance about the abodes 

 of mankind, who are supposedly the 

 most hygienic and cleanly of all creatures, 

 but whose abiding places 'au natural" 

 present an unsightly spectacle in compar- 

 ison with the nests of birds, but of course 

 it is because our requirements are so 

 much greater, and education has devel- 

 oped a love of "accumulations" among 

 us, herein must lie all blame. But we 

 "progress" or so we have determined. 



However, I never see these dignified 

 crows of stately motion moving about 

 without remembering Virgil's : 



"The crow with clamorous cries the shower 

 demands, 



And single stalks along the desert sands." 



r , 



But in Arizona his demand for show- 

 ers is vain, for the absence of the "rain 

 maker" is her greatest deficit. 



To return to the atmospheric or arid 

 effect upon color, I fail to understand 

 why the bleaching process is so observ- 

 able in feathers, yet the most brilliant 

 and tropical coloring predominates in the 

 flora. Does the plant world absorb all of 

 the richest coloring matter of the sun- 

 light, or do they possess an antidote to 

 the alkaline properties of the air? Is at- 



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