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A BUNCH OF TEXAS 
Almost or quite the brightest bird 
that I saw in Arizona — the Arizona 
cardinal, well named superbus , being 
a doubtful exception — was the vermil¬ 
ion flycatcher. I had heard of it as 
sometimes appearing in the neighbor¬ 
hood of Tucson, but entertained small 
hope of meeting it there myself. A 
stranger, straitened for time, and that 
time in winter, blundering about by 
himself, with no pilot to show him the 
likely places, could hardly expect to 
find many besides the commoner things. 
So I reasoned with myself, aiming to 
be philosophical. Nevertheless, there 
is always the chance of green hand’s 
luck; I knew it by more than one happy 
experience; and who could tell what 
might happen ? Possibly it was not for 
nothing that my eye, as by a kind of 
magnetic attraction, fell so often upon 
Mrs. Bailey’s opening sentence about 
this particular bird as day after day, 
on one hunt and another, I turned the 
leaves of her Handbook. “Of all the 
rare Mexican birds seen in southern 
Arizona and Texas,” so I read, “the 
vermilion flycatcher is the gem.” One 
thing was certain: this Mexican rarity 
was not confusingly like anything else, 
as so many of its Northern relatives 
have the unhandsome trick of being. 
If I saw it, ever so hurriedly, I should 
recognize it. 
Well, I did see it, and almost of 
course at a moment when I was least 
looking for it. This was on the 5th of 
February, my fifth day in Tucson. I 
had crossed the Santa Cruz valley, west 
of the city, by one road, and after a 
stroll among the foothills opposite, was 
returning by another, when a bit of 
flashing red started up from the wire 
fence directly before me. I knew what 
it was, almost before I saw it, as it 
seemed, so eager was I, and so well 
prepared; and as the solitary’s com- 
and Arizona Birds. 
AND All 1 ZONA BIRDS. 
panionable habit is, I spoke aloud. 
“There ’s the vermilion flycatcher! ” I 
heard myself saying. 
The fellow was every whit as splendid 
as my fancy had painted him, and to 
my joy he seemed to be not in the least 
put out by my approach nor chary of 
displaying himself. He was too inno¬ 
cent and too busy; darting into the air 
to snatch a passing insect, and anon re¬ 
turning to his perch, which was now a 
fence-post, now the wire, and now, best 
of all, the topmost, tilting spray of a 
dwarf mesquite. Thus engaged, every 
motion a delight to the eye, he flitted 
along the road in advance of me, till 
finally, having reached the limit of his 
hunting-ground, -— the roadside ditches 
filled with water from the overflow of 
the irrigated barley fields, — he turned 
back by the way he had come. 
I went home a happy man; I had 
added one of the choicest and most 
beautiful of American birds to my men¬ 
tal collection. But one thing was still 
lacking: flycatchers are not song-birds, 
but the humblest of them has a voice, 
and having things to say is apt to say 
them. My new acquaintance had kept 
his thoughts to himself. 
This was in the forenoon, and after 
luncheon I went back to walk again 
over that muddy road between those 
ditches of muddy water. The bird 
might still be there. And he was, —• 
still catching insects, and still silent. 
But so handsome! At first sight most 
people, I suppose, would compare him, 
as I did, with the scarlet tanager. The 
red parts are of nearly or quite the same 
shade, — a little deeper and richer, if 
anything, — while the wings, tail, and 
back are dark brown, approaching black, 
— the wings and tail especially, — dark 
enough, at any rate, to afford a brilliant 
contrast. His scientific name is Pyro- 
cephalus , which is admirable as far as 
