fae AUDUBON BULLETIN 
Published Quarterly by the 
fuelmieNcOm coe UelDsUeB ON” SO GUE TY 
Number 75 September, 1950 
Between the Snows 
By JOHN BAYLESS 
“ORRIBLE, ‘ORRIBLE,” croaked a voice which we finally traced to the Cen- 
tral American squirrel cuckoo, a chestnut and gray bird, crow-sized, with 
an amazing repertoire of parrot-like calls which he kept up incessantly. My 
father-in-law, Bernard Douglas of Shelbyville, Ind., insists this call was 
the cuckoo’s studied opinion on conditions in Mexico generally. 
We were on the north bank of the Rio Corona, a lazy river 180 miles 
south of Matamoras and Brownsville, Tex. Lofty moss-shrouded cypress 
lined the river on both sides, a startling contrast to the bleak cactus, mes- 
quite, sand and rock wasteland through which most of the journey south 
had taken us. The thermometer we carried with us recorded about 90 de- 
grees after an hour in the shade of the cypress; we had been afraid to 
look at it most of the time while driving. 
It was mid-afternoon, March 21, and bird life was virtually nil except 
for the cuckoo and the “up-cup-a-coo” of the red-billed pigeons, which we 
had identified earlier in Santa Ana wildlife refuge west of Harlingen, Tex. 
We decided to continue on to Victoria, spend the night, and return early 
in the morning. We found passable lodging, clean, but below tourist stan- 
dards in Texas motels, in a tourist camp just north of Victoria. The food 
at the restaurant we had been advised to patronize was strictly below par 
and our advisor had scared us out of trying any of the native dishes, which 
probably were much tastier than what we had. We enjoyed a stroll on the 
square and a bit of haggling with souvenir peddlers, trying to match their 
speed at converting pesos into their dollars and cents equivalent. 
But we were looking for birds, so a jaunt north of town yielded a Mexi- 
can goshawk, really a small buteo, which posed beautifully for us on a 
yucea, and four yellow-headed parrots, the common cage variety, which 
flew over in formation in the light of the setting sun streaming over a 
lovely mountain range west of the city. 
Next morning we returned to the Rio Corona and found it a madden- 
ing medley of bird calls, almost none of which we recognized. The squirrel 
cuckoo had added a few notes overnight and was practicing them avidly. 
Smaller birds flitted about, stopping each time behind a spray of Spanish 
moss. A tiny jewel of a kingfisher whizzed down the river, looking as blue 
as an indigo bunting, but we were assured later that it had to be the Texas 
kingfisher, which is green and which we thought we knew well from 
earlier views. Then came one of the birds we were looking for. The ringed 
kingfisher. It is larger than our eastern belted kingfisher and red below 
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