Sept., 1910 DISCOVERY OF NEST AND EGGS OF GRAY -CROWNED LEUCOSTICTE 
161 
tempted to fly up and over Harrison’s Pass which is a thousand feet high and very 
steep. It flew up by degrees in a zig-zag line, stopping on the rocks at each turn. 
“July 18, 1901. Found Leucotictes on the top of Mt. Whitney, 14,500 feet. 
They hop along the ridges between the furrows of the snow. Noted them often at 
this date about the small lakes in the snow in groups of four. 
“June 2, 1902. Found on top of Mt. Lyell above Yosemite. 
“July 10, 1902. Found at Bullfrog Lake, 11,000 feet, andontopof Mt. Gould, 
13,800 feet. 
“Of all birds the Leucosticte has ever had a fascination for me, but in all 
my travels I never succeded in finding a nest.” 
AN IRRIGATED RANCH IN THE FALL MIGRATION 
By FLORENCE MERRIAM BAILEY 
W E ONCE spent the first two weeks of September on an irrigated ranch in 
southeastern New Mexico, and, while the study of the prairie-dog problem 
had taken us there, we saw many interesting things in the bird line in 
passing. As the ranch combined alfalfa and stock, outside the branding corrals 
stood mowing machine and baling press, while the adobe houses of the Mexican 
laborers stood in the background. Behind the house, water barrel and wood pile — 
a pile of grubbed-up roots as big as a haj^stack — spoke of the waterless and treeless 
character of the valley; but leafy rows of cottonwoods growing along the irrigation 
ditches, and the vivid green alfalfa fields, gave richness to the immediate landscape. 
From the piazza, as we lookt out on the highroad, the principal passers-by 
were Mexicans. Sometimes there would be a prairie schooner drawn by four 
burros, on one of which rode a small bare-legged Mexican shaded by the inevitable 
peaked hat, energetically whipping up his burro train. Sometimes there would be 
six burros, three abrest; and frequently the load would be of mesquite roots sur- 
mounted by a Mexican. 
When we first got to the ranch the stock was being branded in the corral, and, 
as we past on our way back and forth to the dog field, the fire in the middle of the 
circle, the men with long branding irons making sudden lunges at the terrified 
cattle as they circled around the ring, the bellows of pain, the headlong plunge of 
a maddened steer at his tormentors, and the circle of Mexican on-lookers percht 
safely on top of the high corral fence, all made a sight that we were glad to leave 
behind for the peaceful, green alfalfa fields. 
The irrigation of the alfalfa was a novel and most interesting sight to me. The 
irrigator was a tall, spare Mexican with a picturesque high hat, purple shirt and 
red sash, carrying over his shoulder a long shovel. When he had turned the water 
into a field he would take off his sash, throw it over a fence post, roll his trousers 
high on his brown legs and then wade about among the ditches like a plover, letting 
the water out here, banking it in there, hurrying from place to place till he seemed 
to be everywhere at once. When a sluice had to be opened or shut in a distant 
field he would catch up his sash, noose it around the nose of a horse he kept near 
by and, with the shovel over his shoulder, go swinging off bareback, with the grace 
of a centaur. 
The water from the ditches strewed the fields with multitudes of minnows that 
