Sept., 1920 171 
NOTES ON A FEW BIRDS OF THE GRAND CANYON, ARIZONA 
By MELICENT HUMASON LEE 
T IS six o’clock in the morning, daylight saving time, on the fourth day of 
June, in the Grand Canyon of Arizona. I am sitting under a red-bud tree 
near a little pool beside Bright Angel Trail, a short distance from the In- 
dian Gardens. I am waiting for the hummingbirds to bathe in the dawn-cool 
water. 
The ground is cold as a marble pavement. The abundant leaves of the 
red-bud bear too intense a shade for a pre-sunlit morning; the dense clusters 
of seedpods hang luxuriantly from the twigs. Across the path, at the base 
of the bank, the Indian paint brush glows between the softer-toned blossoms of 
the mallow, and the yellow plume of the Stanleya, to which the hummingbirds 
have not yet darted. In a dark, little niche, overhung by grape-vines, one 
beautiful, solitary thistle poppy blooms. 
Suddenly, I hear a vibrant hum in the air, mingled with excited twitter- 
ings, and shrill squeaks. Buzz, buzz, buz-z-z..... over the willow tips, over 
the tules, over the graceful stems of the tall, waxy-flowered dogbane. Then, | 
eatch the gleam of two little sprites of the air—Black-chinned Hummingbirds 
(Archilochus alexandri), chasing one another with miraculous speed. The com- 
bat ceases as abruptly as it commenced. The contestants separate. One re- 
tires to a grape-vine swing and sits there quietly, occasionally shaking his ridic- 
ulous tail feathers; the other descends to the pool. He dips his little breast 
into the shallow water; he rises into the air; he drops again by gentle stages, 
twirling around after each descent, and squeaking ominously; he dips again, 
and submerging his tiny body to the chin, he trails through the pool like a 
fiery ship of green and violet. 
While he perches on a horizontal stem of dog-bane to dry his feathers, | 
gaze about me in quest of other birds. A male Black-headed Grosbeak (Zame- 
lodia melanocephala) is softly singing on a willow bough which overhangs the 
pool, while his mate is surreptitiously collecting a bundle of fiber from a dried 
plant on the opposite bank. Dark shapes flit constantly about the latter, and, 
by the aid of my field-glasses, I can discern several pairs of Desert Sparrows 
(Ampluspiza bilineata deserticola) apparently nesting in the cactus and other 
growth on the hillside. The Black-throats’ song, strung upon three tones, is 
rather thin and wiry, but especially suited to their environment. Far above 
these little sparrows, almost at the foot of the massive wall of roek which 
towers beyond them, several wild burros, ‘‘escaped from cultivation’’, are leis- 
urely grazing. Almost indistinguishable are they, in their coats of gray, from 
the boulders and brush amongst which they slowly move. 
As I watch them, an insect-like trill floats to me from a ledge of rock, 
lower down the hill-side, and, by carefully focusing my glasses upon the spot. 
I can descry the Rock Wren (Salpinctes obsoletus), standing by a elump of 
cactus, and jerking her body up and down by what seems to be a well-managed 
system of wires. Very evidently, she is nesting in the fissure of rock, as she 
returns again and again to that particular spot, while her mate ealls to her 
from some hidden point of vantage nearby. A rock squirrel runs along a ledge 
above her, sits up meditatively, drops again, and scampers into a crevice. And 
yet the sun has not risen behind me, over that austere barrier of rock. The air 
is still cold, and not a single lizard has stirred. 
