99 
A Bunch of Texas and Arizona Birds. 
Doubtless this peculiar appearance 
was heightened to my eyes because of 
the mincing, wavering, over-buoyant 
method of flight (the wings being car¬ 
ried unusually high) to which 1 have 
alluded, aud which always suggested to 
me the studied movements of a dance. 
I think I never saw one of the birds so 
far forget itself as to take a direct, 
straightforward course from one point 
to another. No matter where they 
might be going, though the flight were 
only a matter of a hundred yards, they 
progressed always in pretty zigzags, 
making so many little, unexpected, in¬ 
decisive tacks and turns by the way, but¬ 
terfly fashion, that you began to wonder 
where they would finally come to rest. 
The two birds first seen — the female 
in lovely gray—■ were evidently at home 
about the camp. The berry-bearing para¬ 
sitic plants in the mesquites seemed to 
furnish them with food, and no doubt 
they were settled there for the season; 
and at least two more were wintering 
out among the Chinese kitchen gardens, 
not far away. Some weeks afterward 
I came upon a pair in a similar mesquite 
growth on the Santa Cruz side of the 
desert. But though in the one place 
and the other I passed a good many 
hours in their society, I never once 
heard them sing, nor, so far as I can 
now recall, did they ever utter any sound 
save a mellow pip, almost exactly like 
a certain call of the robin; so like it, 
in fact, that to the very last I never 
heard it suddenly given, but my first 
thought was of that common Eastern 
bird, whose voice in those early spring 
days it would have been so natural and 
so pleasant to hear, I could have spared 
a dozen or two of thrashers, I thought 
(not brown thrashers), for a pair of rob¬ 
ins and a pair of bluebirds. But south¬ 
ern Arizona is a kind of thrasher para¬ 
dise, while robins and bluebirds desire 
1 It should be said, nevertheless, that strag¬ 
gling- flocks of Western bluebirds — lovely 
creatures — were met with on the desert on 
rare occasions, and once, at Old Camp Lowell, 
a better country, and seemingly know 
where to find it. 1 
In the last week of March, however, 
there took place, as well as I could 
judge, a concerted movement of Phai- 
nopeplas northward. They showed them¬ 
selves in the Santa Cruz valley, here 
and there a pair, until they became, not 
abundant, indeed, but a regular, every¬ 
day sight. Those that I had heretofore 
seen, it appeared, were only a few win¬ 
ter “stay-overs.” Now the season had 
opened; and now the birds began sing¬ 
ing. For curiosity’s sake it pleased me 
to hear them, but the brief measure, in 
a thin, squeaky voice, was nothing for 
any bird to be proud of. They sing 
best to the eye. Birds of the shining 
robes, their Greek name calls them ; and 
worthily do they wear it, under that un¬ 
clouded Arizona sun, perching, as they 
habitually do, at the tip of some bush 
or tree, where the man with birds in 
his eye can hardly fail to sight them and 
name them, across the widest barley 
field. 
One of the birds whose acquaintance 
I chiefly wished to make on this my 
first Western journey was the famous 
canyon wren, — famous not for its 
beauty (beauty is not the wren family’s 
mark), but for its voice. Whether my 
wish would be gratified was of course a 
question, especially as my very modest 
itinerary included no exploration of can¬ 
yons; but I was not without hope. 
I had been in Tucson nearly a week, 
when one cool morning after a cold night 
(it was February 7) I went down into 
the Santa Cruz valley and took the road 
that winds — where there is barely room 
for it—between the base of Tucson 
Mountain and the river. Steep, broken 
cliffs, perhaps a hundred feet high, were 
on my right hand, and the deep bed of 
the shallow river lay below me on my 
left. Here I was enjoying the sun, 
three robins — Westerners, no doubt — passed 
over my head, flying toward the mountains, in 
which they are said to winter. 
