| Cactus WREN. 
Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus Gray. 
Puate IV. Fic. 2. 
Als’HE DRY south-western part of our country, from the lower Rio Grande to the 
q a Pacific, may justly be called the cactus region. This district is very arid and deso- 
late as rain does not moisten the hard ground for many months. No luxurious and varied 
vegetation adds to the beauty of the landscape. Thorny mesquite shrubs, but chiefly 
many species of cactus, mostly armed with large spines and bunches of fine sharp bristles, 
agaves and yuccas, are abundant and give the landscape a very peculiar appearance. 
The opuntias with their thick thorny leaves attain here the height of small trees, while 
the hedgehog cacti’, usually provided with an array of horrid spines, appear at a distance 
like large casks. They are surpassed in size by the yuccas and saguarros? of Arizona, 
the latter of which grows to a height of forty to fifty feet. It is often impossible to 
penetrate the cactus thickets as the sharp spines even pierce thick leather and the smaller 
ones find their way by the hundred into the skin, whence they are only to be removed 
with great difficulty. This region is, however, not destitute of bird-life: on the contrary, 
for many species it seems to be a real El Dorado. Of the great number of peculiar 
birds inhabiting the cactus region the Cactus WREN is especially abundant. All its traits 
are thoroughly Wren-like. It is a sprightly bird, always in motion, now skulking in the 
shelter of the impenetrable cactus patches, now mounting the tops of a cactus or bush 
to scold in a loud, harsh tone, or to utter its beautiful clear and ringing song. It 
shows the same self-assertion, petulance, inquisitiveness, and temerity as our well-known 
House Wren. 
“The English name,’ says Dr. Elliott Coues, ‘“‘which the ‘Cactus’ Wren has acquired 
indicates the nature of its customary resorts, and affords a hint of its peculiar nidifica- 
tion. As we have already seen, several of the Arizona birds are architects of singular 
skill and taste; the Cactus Wren is one of them. In the most arid and desolate regions 
of the South-west, where the cacti flourish with wonderful luxuriance, covering the 
impoverished tracts of volcanic débris with a kind of vegetation only less surly and 
forbidding than the very scoria, this Wren makes its home, and places its nests, on 
every hand, in the thorny embrace of the repulsive vegetation. True to the instincts 
and traditions of the Wren family, it builds a bulky and conspicuous domicile; and 
when many are breeding together, the structure becomes as noticeable as the nests 
which a colony of Marsh Wrens build in the heart of the swaying reeds. But it is not 
a globular mass of material, nor yet a cup; it is like a purse or pouch, and also 
peculiar in its position; for such nests are usually pensile. In the present case, the nest 
resembles a flattened flask—more exactly, it is like the nursing-bottle, with which all 
mothers (and I suspect some fathers) are familiar, and this is laid horizontally, on its 
flat side, in the crotch of a cactus. It is constructed of grasses and small twigs woven 
1 Echinocactus Orcutti, E. Wislizenii, E. Whipplei, E. Visnaga, etc. 2 Cereus giganteus. 
