100 
A Bunch of Texas 
and keeping my eyes open, when a set 
of loud, clear bird-notes in a descending 
scale fell upon my ears from overhead. 
I stopped, pulled myself together, and 
said, “A canyon wren.” I remembered 
a description of that descending scale. 
The next instant a small hawk took wing 
from the spot on the cliff whence the 
notes had seemed to fall. My mind 
wavered, but only for a moment. “No, 
no,” I said, “it is not in any hawk’s 
throat to produce sounds of that qual¬ 
ity ; ” and I waited. A rock wren be¬ 
gan calling, but rock wrens did not count 
with me at that moment. Then, in a 
very different voice, a wren, presumably 
the one I was in search of, began fret¬ 
ting, unseen, somewhere above my head; 
and then, silence. I waited and waited. 
Finally I tided an old trick—A started 
on. If the bird was watching me, as 
likely enough he was, a movement to 
leave his neighborhood would perhaps 
excite him pleasurably. And so it did; 
or so it seemed; for almost at once the 
song was given out and repeated: a 
hurried introductory phrase, and then 
the fuller, longer, more liquid notes, 
trijrping quietly down the scale. 
The singer could be no other than the 
canyon wren; but of course I must see 
him. At last, my patience outwearing 
his, he fell to scolding again, and glan¬ 
cing up in the direction of the sound, I 
saw him on the jutting top of the very 
highest stone, his white throat and breast 
flashing in the sun, and the dark, rich 
brown of his lower parts setting the 
whiteness off to marvelous advantage. 
There he stood, calling and bobbing, 
calling and bobbing, after the familiar 
wren manner, though why he should re¬ 
sent an innocent man’s presence so far 
below was more than any innocent man 
could imagine. 
It would be an offense against the 
truth not to confess that the celebrated 
song fell at first a little short of my 
expectations. Perhaps I had heard it 
celebrated somewhat too loudly and too 
often. It was very pleasing; the voice 
and Arizona Birds. 
beautifully clear and full, and the ca¬ 
dence of the sweetest; it had the grace 
of simplicity; indeed, there was nothing 
to be said against it, except that I had 
supposed it would be — well, I hardly 
know what, but somehow wilder and 
more telling. 
Within a few days I discovered a 
second pair of the birds not far away, 
about an old, long-disused adobe mill. 
They were already building a nest some¬ 
where inside, entering by a crack over 
one of the windows. The female ap¬ 
peared to be doing the greater part of 
the work, while her mate sat upon the 
edge of the flat roof and sang for her 
encouragement, or railed at me for my 
too assiduous lounging about the pre¬ 
mises. The more I listened to the 
song, the better I enjoyed it; it is cer¬ 
tainly a song by itself; I have never 
heard anything with which to compare 
it; and I was especially pleased to see 
how many variations the performer was 
able to introduce into his music, and 
yet leave it always the same. 
The first pair, on the precipitous face 
of the mountain, had chosen the more 
romantic site, and I often stopped to 
admire their address in climbing about 
over the almost perpendicular surface 
of the rock; now disappearing for a few 
seconds, now popping into sight again 
a little further on; finding a foothold 
everywhere, no matter how smooth and 
steep the rock might look. 
The canyon wren is a darling bird 
and a musical genius; and now that I 
have ceased to measure his song by my 
extravagant expectations concerning it, 
I do not wish it in any wise altered. 
His natural home is by the side of fall¬ 
ing water (I have heard him since, where 
I should have heard him first, in a can¬ 
yon), and his notes fall with it. I seem 
to hear them dropping one by one, every 
note by itself, as I write about them. If 
they are not of a kind to be ecstatic over 
at a first hearing (a little too simple for 
that), they are all the surer of a long 
welcome. Indeed, I am half ashamed 
