4 THE AU DUB OWN BU Ee eae 
the throat band. He was a beauty and looked immense so soon after our 
view of the Texas. 
I got here my first good study of the green jay, which I had pursued all 
over Santa Ana refuge getting only glimpses while Anne and her parents 
had lengthy studies of as many as three or four at a time. We did not find 
the brown jay, which we had been assured was common along any river in 
Mexico. 
A large number of flycatcher-like birds began making themselves 
visible in what appeared to be courting displays. They proved to be the 
Xantus’ becard. We saw two coppery-tailed trogons, a Gould’s wren and a 
Townsend’s warbler, all new for our life lists. 
En route back to Brownsville later that day, while crossing on a man- 
powered ferry over the small Rio Purificacion, we saw on a sand bar four 
jacanas, one immature and three adult. We had seen an immature jacana, 
a rail-like bird with the longest toes you ever saw on anything, at Santa 
Ana refuge. 
The ferries were the most frightening thing I had encountered since 
U.S. route 76, a clay monstrosity shown on the maps as a highway across 
the tops of Georgia’s highest mountains, which we made the mistake of 
taking two years ago last April. “Chalan” says an unobtrusive sign by the 
road. About three car lengths farther you are on the brink of a precipi- 
tous, rough 40-foot drop with probably a right angle turn half way down 
to a narrow river. Maybe at your side, but more often at the other side, 
is a flatboat with two men on it with poles so fastened to a wire stretched 
across the river that they can propel the ferry across by moving the poles. 
The car must advance to the far end of the ferry to dislodge its stern 
from the mud, then, while crossing, back to the stern to give the bow a 
lft onto the opposite mud bank. The ferry is about two feet longer than a 
modern car. A good place to have good brakes! Small boys ride across with 
each car chanting “nickel, nickel.” The far side of the river is just as pre- 
cipitous and just as rough. 
Irby Davis, of Harlingen, who is the final authority on birds of the 
Rio Grande valley and one of the few real experts on Mexican birds, had 
steered us away from our original plan of driving to Laredo to enter 
Mexico for a two day trip to Monterrey and back. 
“You will be going 200 miles away from the birds before you start,” he 
said. “You will get more scenery near Monterrey, but no birds you couldn’t 
get in Texas.” 
He listed for us and described some 20 birds which we would have a 
fair chance of finding between Brownsville and Victoria. We did not get 
near all of them, but we did well enough to make us want to try it again 
with more time. He told us he could route us on a three-week trip into 
Mexico, giving us specific stopping places to find particular birds which he 
would describe, on which he would almost guarantee a list of 100 new ones. 
It sounds entrancing and sometime we shall try it. 
We had left Chicago in a small blizzard Wednesday, March 8, driving 
through intermittent snowstorms two-thirds of the way down through 
Illinois. We had compiled a list of only 13 species of birds when we reached 
