286 TEXAS AND ARIZONA 



The feeling against their use is largely prejudice. 

 Let me suit myself with one or two more, there- 

 fore, and say that the rarest and most exciting 

 bird seen by me in Arizona was a painted red- 

 start, Setophaga picta. It was at the base of 

 Tucson Mountain, close by the canyon wrens' old 

 mill. The vermilion flycatcher, rare as I con- 

 sidered it at first, became after a while almost 

 excessively common. I believe it is no exagger- 

 ation to say that forty or fifty pairs must have 

 been living in and about Tucson before the first 

 of April. Unless you were out upon the desert, 

 you could hardly turn round without seeing or 

 hearing them. But there was no danger of the 

 painted redstart's cheapening itself after this 

 fashion. I saw it twice, for perhaps ten minutes 

 in all, and as long as I live I shall be thankful 

 for the sight. 



I was playing the spy upon a pair of what I 

 took to be Arkansas goldfinches, and the ques- 

 tion being a nice one, had got over a wire fence 

 to have the sun at my back. There I had barely 

 focused my eight-power glass upon a leafless wil- 

 low beside an irrigation ditch, when all at once 

 there moved into its field such a piece of absolute 

 gorgeousness as I have no hope of making my 

 reader see by means of any description : a small 

 bird in three colors, — deep, velvety black, the 



