WINGED LIFE 



187 



mediately begins hitching himself up through 

 the worst imaginable rows of needles just as 

 though he were climbing a plain pine-tree. 

 The ordinary turtle-dove with his red pigeon- 

 feet alights on the top of the same sahuaro, 

 the wren bores holes in it and makes a nest 

 within the cylinder ; and the dwarf thrush 

 dashes in and out of tangled thickets of choUa 

 all day long, and yet none of them sufEers any 

 injury. It seems incredible that birds not ac- 

 customed to the desert could do such things. 



Possibly, too, these bush-birds — insect-de- 

 vourers most of them — have some special faculty 

 for catching their prey, though I have not been 

 able to discover it. The fly-catchers, the mock- 

 ing-birds, the finches, in a land of plenty are 

 quick enough in breaking the back of a butter- 

 fly or beetle, and any extra energy would seem 

 superfluous. Still there is no telling what fine 

 extra stimulus lies in an empty crop. And 

 crops are usually empty on the desert. Even 

 the little humming-bird has difficulty in pick- 

 ing a living. In blossom time he is, of course, 

 in fine condition, but I have seen him dashing 

 about in the fall when nothing at all was in 

 bloom, and evidently none the worse for some 

 starvation. He is a swifter flyer than the or- 



Tkewoodr 

 peckers and 

 cactus. 



Mnehes anC 



•mocking- 



birds. 



The hwm- 

 ming-bird. 



