A BUNCH OF BRIGHT BIRDS 281 



seemed to fall. My mind wavered, but only for 

 a moment. " No, no," I said, " it is not in any 

 hawk's throat to produce sounds of that quality ; " 

 and I waited. A rock wren began calling, but 

 rook wrens did not count with me at that moment. 

 Then, in a very different voice, a wren, presum- 

 ably the one I was in search of, began fretting, 

 unseen, somewhere above my head ; and then, 

 silence. I waited and waited. Finally I tried an 

 old trick — I started on. If the bird was watch- 

 ing me, as likely enough he was, a movement to 

 leave his neighborhood would perhaps excite him 

 pleasurably. And so it did ; or so it seemed ; for 

 almost at once the song was given out and re- 

 peated : a hurried introductory phrase, and then 

 the fuller, longer, more liquid notes, tripping in 

 procession down the scale. 



The singer could be no other than the canyon 

 wren ; but of course I must see him. At last, 

 my patience outwearing his, he fell to scolding 

 again, and glancing up in the direction of the 

 sound, I saw him on the jutting top of the very 

 highest stone, his white throat and breast flash- 

 ing in the sun, and the dark, rich brown of his 

 lower parts setting the whiteness off to marvelous 

 advantage. There he stood, calling and bobbing, 

 calling and bobbing, after the familiar wren 

 manner, though why he should resent an inno- 



