Marcu 24, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
—_——— 
NANI 
RAIL EUISTORSY 

The Birds of Death Valley. 
A ROLLING, brown-gray plain broken here 
and there with huge buttes and ranges of buttes, 
that, dwarfed by the’ distance, seem toy moun- 
tains set in a world of mirages—this is the 
Mojave desert. 
A snow white oval sink, spread like a shimmer- 
ing mirror between two rough lines of lava hills, 
fed at either end and along one side by small 
desert streams, its length not more than 
seventy-five milés, its width from five to fifteen 
—this is Death Valley, buried in the heart of 
the Mojave sand plain, 155 miles from the 
nearest railroad and near 300 from Los Angeles. 
Five years ago, almost, I drifted across this 
bit of the world, sometimes alone, sometimes 
in company with other men, who made up a 
party sent out to survey the wonderfully rich 
niter beds that lie to the south and east of the 
valley proper. It is no exaggeration to say 
that the millions which Borax Smith, F. M. 
Teal and others made out of the great saline 
deposits of the northern end of the valley will 
floored with that peculiar hardpan which under- 
lies every foot of this desert at varying depths. 
Along most of these roads the waterholes 
are carefully marked, the common “water sign” 
of the desert being a tin can mounted on a 
stick, the latter driven in the ground at a slant, 
so that the can points in the direction of the 
spring if the latter be a bit off the road. Of 
course, there are all manner of side trails lead- 
ing off from these roads, made by the Indians, 
half-breeds and water-hole prospectors, but if 
these are followed it should be in company 
with a man who knows the portion of the 
desert over which you are traveling, or at least 
an old plainsman, armed with a fund of hill lore 
and the common sense to apply it. There is 
nothing more terrible to me about the desert 
than about any other section of country where 
settlements are few and solitary ranches often 
fifty miles apart. The bad men have about all 
been cleaned off the California desert—if there 
ever were any there—and about the only danger 
a man can anticipate from his kind will come 
to him by way of the thieving Piutes, who will 
in harmony. breed the ravens, one or two species 
of hawks and numbers of owls. As far as iI 
could learn, from observations and specimens 
shot, all the ravens here are of the species 
Corvus corax sinuatus, though I saw several that 
seemed much larger than the average run, and 
these may have been northern ravens. I was 
surprised to find none of the white-necked 
ravens in this part of the desert, as they oc- 
casionally are taken on the other side of the 
range. Neither were any crows noted, though 
at one of the ranches on the rim of the pit 
blackbirds, both red-shouldered and Brewer’s, 
were filling the trees and the tules about the 
spring with music. 
At least four species of hawks were noted— 
the western red-tail, the prairie falcon, the 
sparrow hawk and the Swainson’s. Distant and 
incomplete observations also identified a pair of 
duck hawks, Cooper’s and a pair of sharp- 
shinned hawks, but these were not absolute, and 
so are placed on the hypothetical list. I did not 
get a chance to study the breeding habits of any 
of these, though I saw many huge nests, placed, 

_be dwarfed when the actual value of the de- 
posits of potassium, nitrate, lying here uwun- 
covered to the sun and rain, shall be made 
known to the world. But it is not of the 
mineral deposits of this little-known bit of 
desert that I would write to-day, rather of the 
birds which I went there to study. To one un- 
familiar with the deserts of the Southwest, the 
idea of their avi-fauna being worthy of study 
may be a bit strange, but the general view of the 
desert by those who have not seen it is wrong 
at any rate, and the average book written on 
the subject tends to make it more grotesque 
and terrible than it really is. Like all other 
regions of-new or wild country, the man who 
goes out into the desert should be prepared for 
the unusual, and, above all things else, he should 
have an abundant fund of common sense. The 
desert is not a rolling bed of sand, soft and 
clogging to the feet of horses, unbroken by hills 
or coulées; water is not nearly so scarce as the 
average miner or prospector will tell you, and 
landmarks are plentiful enough to guide the 
man who can keep the lay of country in his 
mind overnight. Much of the desert, especially 
that bounded by the limits of Southern Cali- 
fornia, is cut up by as good roads as can be 
found in the world, hard and durable, being 
RECLAIMING THE DESERT BY IRRIGATION, 
steal everything they can lay hands on whether 
it is loose or tied up. 
In view of the very nature of the desert, both 
geographically and topographically, the largest 
part of its avian population must consist of 
such birds as are in no need of great quantities 
of water for their sustenance as well as such as 
can satisfy their food needs with almost any- 
thing edible. Among such birds the raven 
stands pre-eminently at the head of the list. 
Consequently it is far and away the most promi- 
nent of all large birds, even exceeding the 
hawks in numbers. Everywhere on the desert 
as throughout the rest of the State, house 
finches appear in hordes. How they glean a 
living in this pit, 480 feet below sea level, is 
more than I can understand, but they seem to 
thrive, as they breed in ever-- mesquite thicket 
and in the thatched roof of every Piute hut. 
The ravens nest here as in other parts of their 
range on the highest cliffs they can find—and 
the height of the nest is sometimes two hundred 
or more feet from the ground. Great cloud- 
bursts have cut deep gorges through some parts 
of this country, frequently washing one wall of 
the coulée down to the level of the sloping 
plain, but leaving the other cliff sheer and soli- 
tary, monarch of the surrounding country. Here 
as has been said, well up on high cliffs. The 
only tree of this region is the mesquite, and it 
does not attain to such height as would adapt 
it to a hawk’s requirements, though I saw one 
nest, apparently that of Swainson’s hawk, in 
the top of a twenty-foot “screw” mesquite in the 
midst of a dense thicket which nothing short of 
an elephant could have penetrated. No eagles 
were seen by any of our party; possibly none 
remain in this section the year round, though 
the plentiful supply of rabbits with which the 
whole desert is filled should prove a lure to 
tempt either the bald or the golden eagle from 
the pine-clad slopes of Mounty Whitney, a few 
miles to the north, where I know they nest in 
numbers. 
After the ravens and house finches, the first 
bird that attracted my notice was some form of 
the horned owl, probably the Pacific or the 
western. This was at a small spring, sur- 
rounded by immense cliffs, where we stopped 
the first night out from Randsburg, whence the 
start was made. Numbers of these birds kept 
up a continual “hooting” until daylight, in the 
caves back in the hills. but a thorough search 
early next morning failed to reveal anything inthe 
owl line but a pair of sleepy-looking barn owls. 
About two miles across the channel of a dead 
