Sept, 1916 
MEETING SPRING HALF WAY 
187 
and the badgers that prey on them, all of which are unknown in the clay belts 
adjoining Corpus Christi and Brownsville. 
After visiting the traps we went in search of the birds that were holding 
jubilee on the other side of the woods, and in spite of the warning of the old 
Texan, “Look out, there’s varmints in that bresh,” pushed through the dense 
cactus and thorn armored thicket, bending low to escape the thorny branches 
or shoving rigidly through with minds hardened to the pricks of needles, 
though with eyes out for coiled rattlesnakes. After a strenuous passage we 
reached the edge of a lake of flood water, in the middle of which mesquite 
trees stood up to their heads, black-spotted with Jackdaws, squawking and 
squealing almost loud enough to drown even the cackling of Coots and barking 
of Grebes that were adding to the merry medley on that April morning. 
In one corner of the pond a small flock of Cormorants perched on the mes- 
quites, their long snaky necks and bills raised expectantly. When they de- 
scended to the water they looked droller than ever, for they still sat with long 
bills pointed skyward. A party of gray, white-billed Coots feeding quietly in 
a dark green tide cove or standing on the beach as if at home, and scattered 
groups of Coots swimming about in leisurely homelike fashion offered amus- 
ing contrasts to the strained alert manner of the Cormorants. Some Eared 
Grebes with light ear patches were swimming about as complacently as were 
the Dabchicks, between dives, though their spring journey was not yet com- 
pleted. Through the bushes we caught sight of two Gallinules disappearing so 
fast we merely saw their small hen-like heads and bright red bills in passing. 
Along shore the sand was filled with holes and pellet-made chimneys of 
fiddler crabs, and I spied one little fellow with its arms around a victim back- 
ing down its hole. Coon tracks on the sand told the other side of the crab 
story. 
Taking up our journey again our prairie road disappeared in another 
flood pond, in which we went up to the hubs. Beyond, on the dry prairie we 
drove through bands of color, miles of low pink phlox and pink primroses, yel- 
low Coreopsis, Senecio, or Oenothera, orange brown Thelesperma, scarlet paint- 
ed-cup and white daisies. During the day we noted the Blue Grosbeak, Red- 
winged Blackbird, and Maryland Yellow-throat. In an oak mott that we 
crossed there was an interesting old stage station, a Mexican pole house with 
thatched roof, its pole walls chinked with mud, a brush corral adding to the 
foreign picture. 
Under the oaks of the mott we found three fellow travelers, an old Mexi- 
can with a pointed hat, a boy with a three-story water jug in his hand, and a 
solemn little burro with a peccary skin spread on his back. Our mules shied 
at the group but we stopped to talk to the wayfarers and persuaded them to 
sell us the handsome white-collared peccary skin. Where it had been secured, 
our Spanish was inadequate to discover, but a few of the wary wild pigs are 
still left in the region though they escape the hunter by taking to caves and 
cactus and thorn brush. If a mounted cowboy ropes one, he does it with 
great risk to his horse, for the pigs when brought to bay gash the horse’s legs 
with their sharp tusks. 
After leaving the mott, instead of prairies glowing with flowers, we had 
equally beautiful green salt marshes alive with light that glinted from the 
stems of the marsh grass. The green level stretching away to the horizon was 
dotted with ponds, some bordered with tules, some merely flood water ponds 
