Mar., 1911 
THE OASIS OF THE LLANO 
45 
Remains of a crawfish and a land turtle were probably attributable to a coon, while 
skunk tracks added their testimony as to the popularity of this eagle market. Bits 
of white bone had been carried away by aesthetic wood rats to decorate their nests 
in the junipers. The raven’s nest was evidently an ancestral home, as bushels of 
old sticks had been thrown down on the ground. It might well have been used for 
generations, for it was quite inaccessible, about half way up a fifty-foot sandstone 
wall in a niche under a projecting rock. The old pair, Mr. Bailey reported “croak- 
ing and diving and gyrating along the face of the cliff, flying up to the top of the 
cliff, tilting up; closing their wings, and diving deep into the valley; then up again; 
then off across the face of the cliff.” In another place where two Ravens were seen 
sailing across the face of the wall, a third, when closely watched proved only a 
projected shadow — like many of the supposedly dark realities of life. 
The Buzzards seen flying around the wall were traced to the old carcass of a 
sheep. A faint trail led away from the carcass, and a coyote surprised there by the 
hunters burst out howling so loud that our camp man who was cutting tent pins 
dropped his saw and ran for his rifle. On investigation the cause of the coyote’s 
excited outburst was explained by the discovery of a den containing young under 
the rocks not far away. 
From Mesa Pajarito we followed along the north wall of the Llano till we came 
to a headland bluff rising 1000 feet from the plain, shown by the contour map to be 
the highest point of the Staked Plains. On camping at its foot we could hardly 
wait to explore the neighborhood, to see what new riches we should find in this 
green belt between the upper and lower brown plains; for the walls of the Llano 
were here six hundred feet higher than at the Pajarito amphitheater and promised 
a correspondingly richer flora and fauna at their base. Our first ornithological dis- 
covery had been made when driving into camp, for we were greeted by the loud 
notes of the Quaker-like Gray Vireo, a bird particularly interesting to find because 
of its restricted range in the southwest; and afterwards its cheery though jerky 
song was not only constantly in our ears in camp but often heard among the juni- 
pers. Another bird we were delighted to find at our door was the Scott Oriole, 
that rare musician with exquisite plumage of lemon and black, consistently follow- 
ing out a narrow strip of its native Low'er Sonoran mesquite though surrounded by 
Upper Sonoran junipers and nut pines. A pair of the birds was doubtless nesting 
near us, but they were so shy they would fly on and on through the junipers when 
followed. The souf-of the male, an immature male, suggested the meadowlark’s 
song. His favorite phrase from his rich repertoire heard from camp throughout 
the day was so curiously accented on the second and fifth syllables that as we w^ent 
and came through the junipers with it ringing in our ears it phrased itself appro- 
priately — a ju'-ni-per val'-ley, a ju'-ni-per val'-ley, a ju'-ni-per val'-ley. 
The first night our list of neighborhood discoveries was swelled by a young 
family of Baird Wrens just being put to roost — how joyfully the head of the family 
did sing! — and a Mockingbird with a nest and three handsome blue eggs, a per- 
sistent mocker who, as my notes complain, “kept at something morning, noon, and 
night.” Not to be forgotten were the Nighthawks, though they had been boom- 
ing in the day time about our camps during the entire month since we entered the 
field. 
The next day on a horseback trip when passing through a narrow juniper 
gulch we found a Black-headed Grosbeak sitting on her nest in a hackberry, an 
Arkansas Kingbird building in a pocket of a charred juniper stump, and best of all 
a Gray Vireo brooding her eggs so faithfully that she let me stroke her head on the 
nest — nothing remarkable for a vireo to be sure, but a heart-warming experience 
