182 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XII 
We followed up the juniper bottom parallel to the mesa and campt at the 
nearest point where we could find water, climbed a butte three or four hundred feet 
high to get the lay of the land — on top flushing a nighthawk from her eggs on the 
ground — pickt out the best place from which to climb the mesa, and the next morn- 
ing made an early start for it. At the foot of the mesa, near a Mexican adobe we 
encountered two small boys with skins so white that I spoke to them in English, 
thereby filling them with such amazement and terror that the only answers they 
could make were unintelligible sounds like the noises of frightened little animals. 
Here, at the foot of the mesa, there was no longer any possible dout about the 
pines; but looking up a distance of a thousand feet they were painfully suggestive 
of two-inch Noah’s Ark trees. As we climbed, at 6500 feet by the barometer a halt 
was called, for besides the crowing of a rooster from the adobe below us, we heard 
an unfamiliar persistent sparrow song from the oak brush that made us slip from 
our saddles. The songster was soon found, sitting on the top of a low bush with 
his head thrown back while he sang, but tho unafraid he was so full of song that 
he could not bear to be interrupted and flew ahead out of our way where he could 
keep on singing. When finally caught up with, however, he proved to be the 
Scott sparrow, greatly to our satisfaction, for it was a substantial extension of his 
range. This was still in the Upper Sonoran junipers, with even a touch of Tower 
Sonoran mesquite, and as we climbed up a warm southwest slope to the top most 
of the birds except the hummingbird that flasht before our delighted eyes still be- 
longed to the juniper zone, among them the familiar ash-throated flycatcher, gray 
titmouse, canyon towhee, and rock wren. At 7000 feet, however, 400 feet below 
the top, to our great delight we at last reacht the edge of the Transition zone; at last, 
after endless treeless plains and orchards of juniper and nut pine we stood and lookt 
up the trunk of a yellow pine — a real tree! 
Here, leaving the horses in a beautiful grassy park, unsaddled and picketed so 
they could graze while we were gone, we climbed on up to the crown of the mesa. 
The barometer now registered 7400 feet, and we were really in the pines, that is, in 
a strip of varying width along the western rim of the mesa. Bordering them was 
a fringe of oak brush and beyond that the plains stretcht away as far — farther than 
the eye could reach — to Kansas, as was said grandly with a sweep of the hand to- 
ward the horizon. As we wandered about under the tall trees it seemed as if pines 
had never smelled so sweet, nor the wind in them ever blown so musically. It 
made us more than ever hungry for the mountains and made us rejoice with new 
realization that we were actually on the way to them at last. 
Some of the juniper birds, such as bush-tits, vireos, and lark sparrows, were here, 
of course, with the mixture of country, but we were soon discovering bird after 
bird of the yellow pines, each discovery bringing a double thrill of delight and 
promis. Towhees with their handsome black and brown coats were singing all 
about in the oak brush just as we had seen and heard them a thousand times before 
— how good it seemed! A red-shafted flicker's familiar call reverberated thru the 
pines rousing echoes from many long closed chambers of memory; a bird flying 
away from the back of the tree trunk by which I was standing was recognized 
with a start as the slender-billed nuthatch — another bird of the forest — and — oh! — 
the busy pigmy nuthatch, one of the pleasantest of all little birds to come back to — 
what rare music his tinkling notes made in my ears. His cousin, Sitta nelson i , 
is all business, but pygnuea — the plump, fluffy ball of feathers — seems to have a 
confidential way with his tree trunk and you can imagine him choosing out cozy 
corners among the branches in which to sleep. 
In a pine top there was a long-crested jay with his handsome white-pointed 
