A Bunch of Texas 
And it was there, where the ground was 
all a flower garden, and the dashing 
brook a doubly delightful sight and sound 
after so much wandering over the desert 
and so many crossings of dry, sandy 
river-beds, — it was there, amid a clus¬ 
ter of leafy oaks (strange leaves they 
were) and leafless hackberry trees, that 
I saw my first and only solitaire, ■—• 
Myadestes townsendii. I have praised 
other birds for their brightness and 
song; this one I must praise for a cer¬ 
tain nameless dignity and, as the pre¬ 
sent-day word is, distinction. He did 
not deign to break silence, or to notice 
in any manner, unless it were by an 
added touch of patrician reserve, the 
presence of three human intruders. I 
stared at him, — exercising a cat’s 
privilege, — for all his hauteur, admir¬ 
ing his gray colors, his conspicuous 
white eye-ring, and his manner. I say 
“manner, ” not “ manners. ” You would 
never liken him to a dancing-master. 
He was the solitaire, I somehow felt 
certain (certain with a lingering of un¬ 
certainty), though I had forgotten all 
description of that bird’s appearance. 
It was the place for him, and his looks 
went with the name. Moreover, to 
confess a more prosaic consideration, 
there was nothing else he could be. 
“Myadestes,” I said to my two com¬ 
panions, both unacquainted with such 
matters; “I think it is Myadestes, 
though I can’t exactly tell why I think 
so.” 
We must go into the canyon a little 
way, gazing up at the walls, picking a 
few of the more beautiful flowers, feel¬ 
ing the place itself (the best thing one 
can do, whether in a canyon or on a 
mountain-top); then we came back to 
the hackberry trees, but the solitaire was 
no longer in them. I had had my op¬ 
portunity, and perhaps had made too lit¬ 
tle of it. It is altogether likely that I 
shall never see another bird of his kind. 
For now those cloudless Arizona days, 
the creosote-covered desert, and the 
mountain ranges standing round about 
and Arizona Birds. 10o 
it, are all for me as things past and 
done; a bright memory, and no more. 
One event conspired with another to put 
a sudden end to my visit (which was 
already longer than I had planned), and 
on the last day of March I walked for 
the last time under that row of “ leafless 
ash trees,”-—no longer quite leafless, 
and no longer with a painted redstart 
in them, — and over that piece of wind¬ 
ing road between the craggy hill and the 
river. Now I courted not the sun but 
the shade; it was the sun, more than 
anything else, that was hurrying me 
away, when I vvonld gladly have stayed 
longer; but sunny or shady, I stopped a 
bit in each of the more familiar places. 
Nobody knew or cared that I was taking 
leave. All things remained as they had 
been. The same rock wrens were prac¬ 
ticing endless vocal variations here and 
there upon the stony hillside; the same 
fretful verdin was talking about some¬ 
thing, it was beyond me to tell what, 
with the old emphatic monotony; the 
hummingbird stood on the tip of his 
mesquite bush, still turning his head ea¬ 
gerly from side to side, as if he expected 
her, and wondered why on earth she was 
so long in coming; the mocker across the 
field (one of no more than half a dozen 
that I saw about Tucson!) was bringing 
out of his treasury things new and old 
(a great bird that, always with another 
shot in liis locker); the Lucy warbler, 
daintiest of the dainty, was singing amid 
the willow catkins, a chorus of bees ac¬ 
companying ; the black cap of the pil- 
eolated warbler was not in the blossom¬ 
ing quince-bush hedge (that was a pity) ; 
the desert-loving sparrow hawk sat at 
the top of a giant cactus, as if its thorns 
were nothing but a cushion; the happy 
little Mexican boy, who lived in one cor¬ 
ner of the old mill, came down the road 
with his usual smile of welcome (we 
were almost old friends by this time) 
and a glance into the trees, meaning to 
say, what he could not express in Eng¬ 
lish, nor I understand in Spanish, “I 
know what you are doing; ” and then, 
