Mar., 1912 
A WI<:KK AFIKLI) in vSOUTIII<:RX ARIZONA 
ladder to the next giant 1 examined the holes in the arms fir.st and found three 
young- Gilded h'lickers (Colaf^fcs chrysoidcs ) in one of them. One after another 
they left the nest and flew away, getting gradually closer to the ground and 
finally alighting thereon at a distance of a hundred yards or more. One tried to 
alight on the back of our auto seat but it was too slippery and he fell to the 
ground. They seemed remarkably strong on the wing for their finst flight. 
The next sahuaro held a family of young Mexican Screech Owls (Otus asio 
ciiieraccus). There were three of them, all well feathered lint with considerable 
down still clinging to them, (due parent was in another hole in the same cactus. 
A set of Ash-throated b'lycatchers was found in the same cactus. It was iu a hole 
in an arm and consisted of four eggs with incubation well advanced. The ne.st 
was a vile mess of mixed furs, full of vermin, which 1 unceremoniously dumped. 
Other giants yielded two more sets of Elf Owl, three each, and several nests of 
young Gilded I'dickers. One nest of four young Gila Woodpeckers was found 
and several young of this s])ecies were seen flying about. We spent the whole 
Fig. l.S. CLUMPS OF CHOLL.-\ C.-\CTUS: THE F.WORITE NESTING SITE 
OF P.4LMER .4ND BENDIRF: THR.^SHERS 
day in this fashion, skirting along the edge of the mestiuite forest for a distance 
of some six miles. That night we camped close to where we took the first owl’s 
nest, intending to go into the forest the next day. 
.Starting at the break of the morning of the 24th we stojiped for water at a 
Mexican ranch and found on im[uiry that we would have to run back as far as 
Dos Reales, an Indian village close to San Xavier Mission. The name of this 
village, translated into the English language, means “Two Hits," or twenty-five 
cents. It hardly seemed worth that sum. 
The mesquite forest is on an Indian reservation, which accounts for the fact 
that it is not all cut off yet. The mesquite trees are wonders of their kind. There 
were .some whose trunks, at the base, scaled over four feet in diameter. The large 
bases branched a few feet from the ground into several limbs fifteen or eighteen 
inches in diameter. The tallest reached a height of over sixty feet. The under- 
growth is a thick mass of hackberry, etc., with various thorny bushes growing 
close to the ground. Meandering wood roads lead in every direction and one can 
