:™:::d*: WALKS IN THE CACTUS COUNTRY 3fe:::::::: 



I have mentioned flocks of the Cuernavaca House 

 Finch as haunting- the suburban stubble-fields, and 

 many of these birds were also found in the city itself. 

 During one whole week a brilliant-plumaged male sang 

 to us from the same tree each day as we passed on our 

 early morning walk — a sweet, well-modulated, pleasing 

 strain which revealed the reason for the numerous cap- 

 tives in the bamboo cages hanging in so many doorways 

 and jJcdios. These were, however, more rightly yellow 

 than purple finches, a caged life producing this change 

 in colour after the first moult, which becomes more 

 pronounced with each succeeding shedding of the 

 feathers. Once I saw a wild male bird singing to a 

 caged female, and again a male at liberty offered a beak- 

 f ul of straw to a brown lady bird in a bamboo prison. 



Our most pleasant memory of these birds is of a mated 

 pair in full plumage on an adobe wall, the male bring- 

 ing straw after straw to his mate and piling them at 

 her feet, she paying no attention for a time, absently 

 preening her feathers. But before we left them she 

 made two trips, carrying part of the pile to a ledge 

 under the tiles where the foundation of the nest was 

 already in place. The male sang almost continuously, 

 even uttering a few chirps and twitters while flying 

 up with a straw in his beak. 



There are few people in the western portion of our 

 country who do not know the well-named Yellow- 

 headed Blackbird, but for us Easterners its habitat is 



<4: 63 ^ 



