184 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XVIII 
and hanging tails marked them when too far away to see their chestnut backs 
or yellow chest patches. Their familiar song with its mouthed furry burr 
suggested the wheat fields of Illinois, for which some of them may have been 
bound. When not in exclusive rows of their own kind, the Dickcissels were 
often sitting alongside the large Mourning Doves, making the groups suggest 
old and young. A droll picture was seen one day, May 9, on our return trip, 
four Hummingbirds sitting on a fence, mere darning needles against the big 
prairie. 
On the fence posts or low bushes from our first day out we occasionally 
saw one of the large Hawks, swainsoni and sennetti, among the rare pleasures of 
our journey. Swainsoni was a familiar westerner but the southern sennetti 
was new to me. When opportunity afforded 1 noted eagerly its immaculate 
breast, white rump, and white tail with black subterminal band ; but the im- 
pression of the bird is what is recalled to-day when a level prairie comes to 
mind. At a distance one sees a large statue of a Hawk on the prairie floor; 
on nearer approach, a King of Hawks looking up with calm enquiring gaze, 
both gaze and pose bespeaking the silent power of the race. The white of the 
Hawk, by Mr. Thayer’s view of protective coloration, has been worked out to 
the undoing of its prey, the small mammals that look up at it against the light 
of the sky into which its whiteness enables it to fade ; while on the other hand 
the small mammals have become colored like the prairie to protect them from 
furred and feathered hunters that look earthward. 
Some Jack rabbits that we saw on our first day’s drive trusted to their 
protective coloration as if they knew what Nature had done for them. While 
one ran off fleetly, its long black-marked ears held high, several crouched 
motionless, and one fairly skulked along, its ears flat on its back concealing 
the conspicuous black nape, as it ran with body close to the ground. One 
of the crouching ones trusted to its disguise, but with anxiety in its big eyes, 
while we drove near enough to have touched it with a whip. In another place 
a Jack was jumped up from the horses’ feet and apparently half asleep broke 
all the rules of protective conduct, stopping only a few yards from us and sit- 
ting down on its haunches with ears up full length and black neck conspicuous, 
a rare exception to our common experiences. 
Jack rabbits were the only animals seen on the open prairie but on the 
clay banks of Petranilla Creek when we made camp, tracks of coon, wild cat, 
and coyote, besides the excitingly strange tracks of armadillo — curious round, 
stumpy nail prints — suggested many stories of north and south. Big armadillo 
burrows were also found on our trip, slanting under cactus roots, and under 
tufts of marsh grass. How ardently I wished for a sight of the ancient ar- 
mored beasts ! 
The rich band of vegetation bordering the creek demonstrated what water 
will do on the prairie. The flora showed the same northern and southern ad- 
mixtures that made the fauna especially interesting. Elms and ashes stood 
side by side with hackberry, moss-hung live oaks, blooming cactus, palmettos 
that were all leaves, and the curious all-thorns that instead of leaves have 
green bark covering branches and thorns. Our camp floor encircled by these 
interesting trees and bushes was carpeted by pink primroses that, at nine in 
the morning, were still facing west where they had turned to follow the sun 
the night before. 
Both migrant and resident birds enlivened the camp with their bright col- 
