188 



THE DESERT 



Doves and 

 grosbeaks. 



The lark 

 a/ndfiicker. 



dinary bird and is also duller in coloring, but 

 in other respects he seems not different. He 

 breeds on the desert, building his nest in the 

 pitahaya ; and he and his mate then have a 

 standing quarrel with their neighbors for the 

 rest of the summer. There is not in the whole 

 feathered tribe a more quarrelsome scrap of 

 vivacity than the humming-bird. 



The dwarf dove common to Sonora, the 

 oven-bird, the red grosbeak, and many other 

 of the smaller birds known to civilization, are 

 found on the desert ; but apparently with no 

 special faculty for overcoming its hardships. 

 This is due perhaps to the fact that they are 

 not always there — are not exclusively desert 

 birds. Nor do any of the migratory birds be- 

 long to the desert, though they stop here for 

 weeks at a time in their flights north or south. 

 At almost any season of the year one sees the 

 cow-blackbird and the smaller crow-blackbird. 

 The mocking-bird comes only in the spring 

 and fall, and the lark in early summer. The 

 lark looks precisely like the Eastern bird, but 

 his note is changed ; whereas the flicker has 

 changed the color under his wings from yel- 

 low to pink, but not his note. The robin is 

 no whit difEerent from the front-lawn robin of 



