278 TEXAS AND ARIZONA 



studied movements of a dance. I think I never 

 saw one of the birds so far forget itself as to take 

 a direct, straightforward course from one point 

 to another. No matter where they might be 

 going, though the flight were only a matter of a 

 hundred yards, they progressed always in pretty 

 zigzags, making so many little, unexpected, in- 

 decisive tacks and turns by the way, butterfly 

 fashion, that you began to wonder where they 

 would finally come to rest. 



The two birds first seen — the female in lovely 

 gray — were evidently at home about the camp. 

 The berry-bearing parasitic plants in the mes- 

 quites seemed to furnish them with food, and 

 no doubt they were settled there for the season ; 

 and at least two more were wintering out among 

 the Chinese kitchen gardens, not far away. And 

 some weeks afterward I came upon a third pair, 

 also in a mesquite grove, on the Santa Cruz side 

 of the desert. But though in the two river val- 

 leys I passed a good many hours in their society, 

 I never once heard them sing, nor, so far as I 

 can now recall, did they ever utter any sound 

 save a mellow pip, almost exactly like a certain 

 call of the robin ; so like it, in fact, that to the 

 very last I never heard it suddenly given, but 

 my first thought was of that common Eastern 

 bird, whose voice in those early spring days it 



