280 TEXAS AND ARIZONA 



man with birds in his eye can hardly fail to sight 

 them and name them, across the widest barley 

 field. 



One of the birds whose acquaintance I chiefly 

 wished to make on this my first Western jour- 

 ney was the famous canyon wren, — famous not 

 for its beauty (beauty is not the wren family's 

 mark), but for its voice. Whether my wish 

 would be gratified was of course a question, es- 

 pecially as my very modest itinerary included 

 no exploration of canyons ; but I was not with- 

 out hope. 



I had been in Tucson nearly a week, when one 

 cool morning after a cold night (it was February 

 7) I went down into the Santa Cruz Valley and 

 took the road that winds — where there is barely 

 room for it — between the base of Tucson 

 Mountain and the river. Steep, broken cliffs, 

 perhaps a hundred feet high, were on my right 

 hand, and the deep bed of the shallow river lay 

 below me on my left. Here I was enjoying the 

 sun, and keeping my eyes open, when a set of 

 loud, clear bird notes in a descending scale fell 

 upon my ears from overhead. I stopped, puUed 

 myself together, and said, " A canyon wren." I 

 remembered a description of that descending 

 scale. The next instant a small hawk took wing 

 from the spot on the cliff whence the notes had 



