190 East and West 
Crissal take the place of the California: 
while the cafion towhee supplants the Cali- 
fornia and the spurred towhee, so common in 
Southern California. The cactus wren is a 
noisy rollicking fellow without vocal power and 
little like a wren in appearance. A smaller 
bird, the rock wren, keeps more to the ground 
and his metallic call-note greets one from 
the rockiest places, but not as a rule from the 
sheer cliffs, which appear to belong by all 
traditions of the race to the cafion wren— 
whose liquid melting notes fall on my ear asI 
descend from my mountain garret to the 
creek bed. Of sparrows, there are those boreal 
sojourners the golden-crowned and the white- 
crowned, and with them is to be seen that 
austral species, the black-chinned desert spar- 
row, so that birds of the glacial peaks and the 
deserts thus hobnob together during the 
winter months. Strangely enough the desert 
sparrow has a glacial voice—a faint glassy 
tinkle that suggests icicles dropping upon 
ice in a thaw. 
Perhaps the most beautiful birds are the 
Arizona cardinal and the phainopepla; the 
former resembling the Eastern cardinal, 
the latter, a jet black, crested bird with a grey 
lining to his wings, of extremely graceful 
