FOREST AND STREAM. 
[MarcH 24, 1906. 



HORNED OWL FROM THE MOJAVE DESERT, 
river there was another range of cliffs, and I 
suppose that this spring was merely a sort of 
hunting ground, for the birds had their homes 
in these further caves. We did not have time to 
investigate the matter, however, to my sincere 
regret, for I have since learned that a rich 
burying ground of the early dwellers in this 
section has recently been uncovered there. Ap- 
parently there are no burrowing owls in Death 
Valley or its immediate environs, at least we 
saw none, and I could learn nothing of any 
such birds from the Piute boys hanging about 
our camp, so I must set down the two men- 
tioned as the only ones on our list, though I 
strongly suspect that search would reveal the 
tiny elf owl as a constant resident here. Screech 
owls on the west coast are so habitually silent 
that one comes upon them only by accident, 
especially in a strange country. I saw none of 
them, but was told by an Indian boy of a small 
gray owl which I inferred must have been this 
species. 
Immediately about the edge of Death Valley, 
nor even a bit back in the hills, I did not see 
any road-runners, a most common bird along 
the roads and on the mesas to the west of the 
mountains, but thrashers of two or three sorts 
were noted, though I am of the opinion that all 
were really of two species—the California and 
the curve-billed. Small birds, such as sparrows, 
were plentiful in the mesquite thickets, but none 
actually identified, though I saw Gambel’s and 
what I took to be the sage sparrow several 
times. Song sparrows were occasionally seen 
in the reeds and sedges about the pools, and 
one dead one, found by me was undoubtedly the 
desert song, sparrow, Melospiza fasciata fallax 
(Baird). Two species of horned larks were 
identified, the desert horned lark and the dusky 
horned lark, the latter most numerous by three 
to one. No mourning doves were seen in the 
bed of the valley, but out on the desert they oc- 
casionally appeared. At Manse, Nye county, 
Nevada, at the base of the Charleston moun- 
tains, a large band of pigeons, presumably the 
band-tailed variety common to the whole coast, 
passed over, but at such an altitude that no 
specimens could be secured. 
What few mourning doves there are on this 
part of the desert seem to be protected by com- 
mon consent, and no one ever thinks of shoot- 
ing them. . On the west coast they are one of 
the most hunted af all game birds, but here they 
come around the doors of the ranch houses and 
the Piute huts, apparently as much at home as 
-sumably because they have not. been 
the chickens that scratch over the same ground 
daily. In common with most birds of the desert, 
the doves here are much lighter in color than 
in other parts of their range, and there is 
doubtless a wide field for study along these lines 
by some painstaking ornithologist who might 
take up his residence on this bit of desert for 
at least the cycle of the four seasons. I do not 
suppose there is any portion of the world’s sur- 
face where aptosochrématism could be studied 
so easily or with such a wide range of examples 
as on the American, or possibly I should say, 
the California desert. The shrike (Lanius ludo- 
vicianus gambeli) so plentiful on the Pacific 
slope, and so strongly marked in his plumage 
in that section, becomes here a pallid fellow, his 
deep blue-black markings turned to heavy gray 
and his gray belly almost white. I have no idea 
that this color change was ever brought about 
by successive molts, but rather by the gradual 
transformation of all his colors through the 
effects of the climate. The horned owl shown 
herewith, taken on another part of the same 
desert, exhibits the same pale tone when com- 
pared with either the eastern or extreme west- 
ern birds of the same family. The ochraceous 
color of the barn owl, becomes a sickly yellow 
amid the caves of Death Valley, and the proba- 
bilities are that the colors of the hawks, even 
during the nesting season, are not nearly so 
bright as they are on the coast. 
But far and away the most interesting birds 
of the whole of Death Valley are the quail, 
which are so plentifully scattered through the 
mesquite thickets up and down every water 
course. Some years ago there came to this 
region a gentleman who had been given the 
name of ‘Bellerin’” Teck, presumably on ac- 
count of his voice. It is further said that Mr. 
Teck came into the country in the brief interval 
between two.days, with a sheriff not very far 
back on,his trail.. With him he brought a coop- 
full of quail from Arizona, Gambel’s quail they 
proved to be, and these he released in the river 
bottom near his place. To-day they.are scat- 
tered over that country in hordes, the prettiest. 
gamest, cutest little partridges that ever lifted 
wing before dog or man. ‘They lie close, pre- 
much 
hunted, and fly fast, making an altogether en- 
joyable .bird to hunt, though if one takes pot 
shots at them, the game soon becomes slaughter. 
I have known a Piute boy, armed only with a 
bow and arrow of his own make, to kill twenty- 
two of the birds in’one afternoon,.all in.a 
clump of mesquite less than a quarter of a. mile 
square. I myself killed seventeen in less than 
an hour, shot every one on the wing, and got 
all that dropped, without a dog. While we were 
in the quail country we lived well, and then we 
went over into the duck country—and here I 
must tell you about the ducks. 
Death Valley and the brooks that empty into 
it would be a paradise for duck hunters, if it 
were only a bit more accessible. I thought I 
had seen a few lines of ducks out in a blind on 
the edge of the Pacific Ocean, but one afternoon 
when our wagons rolled into the south end ot 
Death Valley, drawing up to a spring known as 
Saratoga Springs, I forgot immediately all the 
ducks I had ever seen before. The little lagoon, 
fed by the spring, was literally black with ducks 
and coots. Tules bordered the lake all round 
about, but its whole size could not have been 
greater than 250 yards at its highest, which was 
probably when we saw it. Fed by thermal 
springs, shallow and broad, the lake produced a 
surprising amount of marsh grasses and other 
food for the water fowl. Mudhens or coots 
were everywhere, skulking out of the long grass 
at one’s feet, not striving to fly out of danger, 
but merely slipping away, fearing man as little 
as they did the animals that came to their pool 
to drink. Of ducks we found mallards, red- 
heads, teal, (green-wing, blue-wing and cinna- 
mon), pintail, gadwall, shoveller, canvasbacks 
(though these last were few in number, and 
widgeon (Anas americana). I presume that some 
of these remain to breed as they do at about 
the same latitude on the coast, but could not 
say as to this. We did not, of course, kill all 
of these, but several members of the party, in- 
cluding the writer; were familiar with the ducks 

NEST AND EGGS OF GAMBEL’S QUAIL 
of the southwest coast, and the identity of those 
not shot was established to a reasonable de- 
gree of accuracy by the use of the opera glass 
at distances. varying from twenty-five to fifty 
feet. I never saw game birds of any sort so 
tame. as these were; one of.our.party killed 
twenty-two ‘the day before Thanksgiving Day 
on the upper reaches of the Amargosa River, 
where potholes and muskegs give the webfeet 
ample feeding grounds. One pair of geese were 
seen, but they left at the approach of the hunt- 
ers, and at so great a distance that their species 
could not -be determined. 
Shore birds. do not.seem so plentiful on the 
desert, even on the mud flats which border some 
of the desert streams and on the bogs that form 
the headwaters. of others. I heard a few passing 
over at night; but the most.I saw were a hand- 
ful of curlew and numbers. of kildeer. These 
latter birds, however, are numerous all over 
California, except at the beaches, where they 
are supplanted by sandpipers and other plover. 
I saw a single mountain plover nailed to a barn 
door at a ranch in the Nevada desert, and an- 
other member of the party shot a willet at the 
pond at Saratoga Springs. 
As may be supposed from the fact that small 
insect life, in the way of flies and gnats, is very | 
abundant on the desert, it may be noted that 
fly-catchers and allied birds are fairly common, 
especially in such cafions as have springs or 
small watercourses in them. I saw both species 
of kingbird common to the western slope—the 
Arkansas and Cassin’s, though neither were of 
as bright colors as near my western home. In 
the fall, on the other side of the mountains, 
Cassin’s kingbird comes down out of the higher 
hills where it breeds and is quite common about 
the settlements. Here, however, it seems to be 
fully as plentiful at all seasons of the year as the 
larger and more gaudily colored Arkansas 
species. But by far the showiest and prettiest 
of all the California fly-catchers, the phaino- 
pepla, is common all the year round on the 
edge of Death Valley. Ordinarily, in other sec- 
tions of its habitat, this bird retires to Mexico 
with the coming of the winter months, but here 
the warm ciimate and apparent abundance of 
food induce it to remain all year around, breed- 
ing in summer in the leafy mesquite trees that 
clothe the bottom lands, saving from utter deso- 
lation the otherwise barren world. Strange to 
say, even in these mesquite thickets where con- 
ditions seemed exactly suitable, and though the 
