A BUNCH OF BRIGHT BIRDS 279 



would have been so natural and so pleasant to 

 hear. I could have spared a dozen or two of 

 thrashers, I thought (not hrown thrashers), for 

 a pair of robins and a pair of bluebirds. But 

 southern Arizona is a kind of thrasher paradise, 

 while robins and bluebirds desire a better coun- 

 try, and seemingly know where to find it.^ 



In the last week of March, however, there 

 took place, as well as I could judge, a concerted 

 movement of Phainopeplas northward. They 

 showed themselves in the Santa Cruz Valley, 

 here and there a pair, until they became, not 

 abundant, indeed, but a counted-upon, every-day 

 sight. Those that I had heretofore seen, it ap- 

 peared, were only a few winter " stay-overs." Now 

 the season had opened ; and now the birds be- 

 gan singing. For curiosity's sake it pleased me 

 to hear them, but the brief measure, in a thin, 

 squeaky voice, was nothing for any bird to be 

 proud of. They sing best to the eye. " Birds of 

 the shining robes," their Greek name calls them ; 

 and worthily do they wear it, under that un- 

 clouded Arizona sun, perching, as they habitually 

 do, at the tip of some tree or bush, where the 



1 It should be said, neyertheleBa, that straggling flocks of 

 Western bluebiids — lovely creatures — were met with on the 

 desert on rare occasions, and once, at Old Camp Lowell, three 

 robins — Westerners, no doubt — passed over my head, flying 

 toward the mountains, in which they are said to winter. 



