Sept., 1916 
183 
MEETING SPRING HALF WAY 
By FLORENCE MERRIAM BAILEY 
II. ( Continued from page 155 ) 
D RIVE DOWN across the southernmost prairies of Texas in April if you 
would meet the last of the migrating hordes of birds and see one of 
Nature’s most remarkable exhibits of ‘social plants’. Daisies that 
whiten occasional meadows in the east and the so-called poppies that gild 
strips of uncultivated land in California partially explain the term, but on the 
prairies most of the species are social plants and acres or miles of one species 
are followed by acres or miles of another species. Blue-bonnets dominated all 
the other flowers at Austin and were among the dominant flowers at Corpus 
Christi. Beyond them there w T as one flower bed about a mile wide and three 
miles long, solid Coreopsis, so brilliantly yellow it fairly mirrored the sun. 
That many of the social plants like Coreopsis, verbena, spiderwort, and phlox 
are the familiar garden flowers of the east makes their riotous growth seem 
peculiarly remarkable. Fresh from an eastern garden, even rods of verbena 
are enlarging to the mind ! 
The richest flora and fauna between Corpus Christi and Brownsville was 
found on the hands of clay soil adjoining the two towns and separated by a 
wide stretch of sandy soil. The most conspicuous flowers of the clay were 
yellow tar weed, yellow and pink primrose, purple verbena, magenta Callir- 
rhoe, and yellow. Coreopsis. Cactus, thorny chaparral, and mesquite also oc- 
curred on the clay soil, while on the sandy tracts here and there among the 
sand dunes stood live oak groves. 
We began our three hundred and sixty mile drive from Corpus Christi 
to the Mexican boundary and return, on April 24, 1900, and that day made 
twenty-two miles to Petranilla Creek, enjoying the alternation of green 
mesquite orchards and gay flower prairie. One section of prairie had miles of 
pink evening primroses stretching as far as the eye could see. In the mesquite 
orchards the beautiful trees suggested the pepper trees of California with 
their finely cut waving foliage branched to the ground, and toward sunset the 
slanting light made the lacy foliage an intense yellow green. Though not yet 
decorated with their delicate tasselated yellow blooms, two trees that we saw 
bore brilliant blossoms — scarlet-breasted Vermilion Flycatchers ! One of these 
was in a mesquite on the Oso, how musically the Spanish names run, the other 
in a tree at Mott Aura, Mott being the local name for a small grove on the 
open prairie (this one having a mixture of huisache, hackberry, and mesquite), 
Aura commemorating the Turkey Y ultures which formerly frequented the 
grove. Having the unusual addition of a pond, Mott Aura had attracted not 
only the scarlet Pyrocephalus, green Vireos, and black Jackdaws, hut also a 
Solitary Sandpiper and a number of Yellow-legs. 
On the prairie the characteristic birds seen during our journey were Mea- 
dowlarks, Mourning Doves, Dickcissels, Sennett Thrashers, Nighthawks and 
Upland Plover. Knowing Dickcissels previously only as individual songsters 
well met on their breeding grounds in the wheat fields of the north, it was a 
pleasant surprise to meet the spring flocks on their way north. We began meet- 
ing them on our first day out. Long rows, rows sometimes reaching hundreds, 
were lined up on the fences like Swallows on telegraph wires. Their flat heads 
