196 DENIZENS OF THE DESERT 



was always to find that no one had whistled. 

 This puzzled me until I found the noise came 

 from the thicket, and of course it must be the 

 Mexican ghost. This I believed until, a few 

 days later, accident revealed to me the real 

 whistler, a Le Conte thrasher. The note of the 

 thrasher can be mistaken for that of no other 

 bird. It resembles closely the whistle a man 

 employs in calling a dog — short with rising 

 inflection at the end. So striking is the resem- 

 blance that it is nearly impossible to distinguish 

 one from the other. The calls are uttered at 

 intervals of about a minute, when the bird is in 

 the mood, and are easily imitated. If the imi- 

 tation is accurate, the bird will continue answer- 

 ing for a long time, but care must be taken not 

 to repeat the whistle too rapidly or he sees 

 through the deception. In addition to the call 

 note he has a very attractive song which re- 

 sembles that of an uneducated mocking-bird, 

 though fuller and richer and pitched in a higher 

 key. 



"The only drawback to the song is its infre- 

 quency, even when the birds are most abundant. 

 You may be in their midst all day and see sev- 



