The Phainopepla 
tragedy, I cannot escape a sense of deep resentment toward such unfeeling 
and cowardly parents. It was monstrous! Such conduct brings us to 
realize anew that the intelligence of birds is a very imperfect and unde¬ 
veloped thing at best. Birds are moved rather by deep, unconscious 
promptings, which we in our ignorance have dubbed instincts. These 
instincts, however they may have arisen, have to do only with the usual, 
the regular, the ordained. A chance variation, an accident of difference 
too slight for human detection, may throw the whole mechanism out of 
gear. We are brought face to face, then, with the irrational, and it 
plagues us. But the mother instinct! It is that which we have counted 
upon as being infallible. Failure here outrages us. Pity we may, and 
forgive, but no longer trust. 
But the eccentricity of the Phainopepla is best exemplified in its 
distribution. Here it is easily first cousin to the Cedar Waxwing (as the 
taxonomists aver). The Waxwing is a nomad, and acknowledges no 
tyranny, not even that of the season. Similarly, the Phainopepla society, 
if it ever had any coherence, has been disrupted by individual or partisan 
caprice. Now the birds appear in a given section in considerable num¬ 
bers, now they are scarce, and now they absent themselves altogether. 
Why this difference, we cannot altogether tell, though we surmise it may 
be largely due to variation in food supply. All fruit-eating birds are 
more or less at the mercy of changing seasons. This question of migra¬ 
tion and distribution is, however, so interesting in case of the Phainopepla 
that we will endeavor to re-state it in detail. The Phainopepla winters 
chiefly in Lower Sonoran areas, from the Mojave and Colorado deserts 
south to Cape San Lucas and the Valley of Mexico. Within our limits 
the bird is chiefly confined in winter to the mesquite-bearing areas of the 
deserts and the lower Colorado River Valley. But where the food supply 
warrants it, scattering individuals, or little groups, may winter as far 
north as Mt. Hamilton, in Santa Clara County. Joseph Mailliard found 
them common one winter at Paicines, in San Benito County, and I have 
seen them at San Ardo, on the lower Salinas River. 
The desert-wintering birds remain to breed in late February, and 
in March; and then in April migrate to the cooler sections of the State, 
west and north. Whether these desert-nesting birds breed again when 
they arrive at their summer home, we do not know; but it is more probable 
that they remain as a non-breeding element in the local summer popula¬ 
tion. The bulk of the birds, coming from places and directions unknown, 
irregularly invade the western portions of southern and central California 
about the middle of April, with fresh accession of numbers up to June 1st. 
They abound in the San Fernando and neighboring valleys, clinging, rather 
fatuously, to the dwindling desert washes, although they appear to be 
