With the first of April approaching, the life of Arizona birds takes
on a busier complexion. The idle season is over; now there are nests
to be built (no small undertaking, in itself, as a man may easily
find out by setting himself to build one), and a family to be watched
over and defended. Now the human visitor begins to understand what
cactuses were made for. As he walks among the whitish-green chollas,
giving them elbow-room, he has only to glance to right and left to
see what a considerable proportion of them are inhabited; this one by
a pair of thrashers, the other by a pair of cactus wrens. In neither
case is there any serious attempt at concealment; partly because the
attempt would be useless; partly, we may guess, because concealment is
unnecessary. If your safe is burglar proof, why be at the trouble to
hide it? Neither squirrel nor snake is likely to climb a cholla cactus,
and even a man knows enough to approach it with caution.
Of the two species of thrasher that live in the desert the larger one,
known as Palmer’s, seems to be the earlier breeder. I found a nest
with eggs on the first day of March; and on the ninth, I came upon a
brood of young birds already out of the nest. They were still new to
the world, acting as if they found it a strange, unintelligible place;
but they were fully fledged, and when put to it, flew from one cholla
to another without difficulty. Still, they had more faith in cactus
thorns than in wing-power, and allowed me almost to lay hands on them
before taking flight.
The two desert-inhabiting thrashers, by the by, Palmer’s and Bendire’s,
are so much alike (the Palmer being somewhat longer and darker than
its neighbor), that it was some time before I felt sure of myself in
discriminating between them. As to the question of comparative length
(one of the most uncertain points on which an observer can base a
determination), I fell back upon an old method, which it seems worth
while to mention here, because I have never seen it referred to in
print. It has served one man well, and may do as much for another.
Two of our Eastern birds that are most troublesome to beginners in
ornithology are the downy and the hairy woodpecker, the only difference
between them--the only one that can ordinarily be seen in the field, I
mean to say--being one of size. Well, I long ago discovered for myself
that it was much easier to carry in my eye the comparative measurements
of the two birds’ bills than the comparative measurements of the birds
themselves. Let me see the head in profile, and I could name its owner
almost beyond mistake.
This method, as I say, I resorted to in the case of my two desert
thrashers, and little by little (time itself being of great service
in such matters), I settled the question with myself. And still
there remained a certain fact that cast a shade of doubt over my
determination. In Mrs. Bailey’s Handbook, the only authority I had
brought with me, Mr. Herbert Brown, after twenty years’ experience
with Tucson birds, is quoted as saying that the Bendire thrasher
almost never sings, whereas the birds that I was calling by that name
were in song continually. What was I to think? It seemed a case for a
gun. Without it, how could I ever be sure of my reckoning? I was in a
box, as we say. But there was a way out. There almost always is. The
two species lay eggs of different colors. I must find them; and with
patience I did; first, the blue-green eggs of Palmer, and then (two
sets in one day), the whitish eggs of Bendire; and my identification
of the owners, made before the eggs were examined, turned out to be
correct in all cases.
In the way of music, neither bird is equal to the brown thrasher of
the East. In fact, if I am to be judge, one Massachusetts thrasher,
in his cinnamon-colored suit (and in the top of a gray birch), could
outsing any half-dozen of the birds in this Arizona desert. It is to be
said, however, that there is a third species here (not on the face of
the desert itself, but in the thickets along the Rillito River), the
crissal thrasher so called, whose song I have yet to make sure of. He
is larger even than the Palmer, and to look at him should have a fuller
voice.
And this reminds me that I had been in Tucson more than a month before
I saw a mockingbird; and even now, when I have been here almost two
months, I have seen but three. The people generally seem to mistake
the thrashers for mockers. If I speak to them about the strangeness of
the mocker’s absence, they declare that mockers are common here. At
least two persons have turned upon me with the assertion, “Why, there’s
one singing out there at this minute.” And they point to a thrasher,
a bird that wears not one of the mocker’s three colors,--gray, black,
and white,--and for music is as much like him as a child’s tin
whistle is like a master’s flute. And still it is true, at least the
systematists tell us so, and I have no thought of questioning it, that
the mockingbird is only a nobler kind of thrasher. And thrashers, the
mocker included, are only larger kinds of wrens.
Arizona is the wrens’ country. During my short stay in Tucson I have
seen ten species: the sage thrasher, the Western mockingbird, the
Bendire thrasher, the Palmer thrasher, the crissal thrasher, the cactus
wren, the rock wren, the canyon wren, the Baird wren, and the interior
tule wren.
The sage thrashers, whose mysterious silence was commented upon in a
previous article, are only now beginning to find their voices; for they
are still (March 21) in the desert, though they will go elsewhere to
breed. Two days ago, while returning from the Rillito Valley, I came
upon a group of them, and to my great pleasure two or three were in
song; not letting themselves out, to be sure, but running over a medley
of a tune under their breath in a kind of dumb rehearsal. I could
barely hear it, but I saw at once why the birds, for all their short
bills and unthrasher-like ways, are called sometimes sage thrashers and
sometimes mountain mockingbirds. I hope their _sotto voce_ preludings
will not outlast my stay among them.
One of my particular favorites here is the Say phœbe. From the first he
took my fancy. All his ways please me. As the homely phrase is, I like
the cut of his jib. His plaintive call is never wearisome, though he
is exceedingly free with it. And I have grown to like him and his mate
the better because they are fond of certain places where I myself am
given to spending now and then an idle hour. There are four abandoned
shanties in different parts of the desert, in the shade of which I
often rest; and every one of them has its pair of Say phœbes. I saw the
birds with building materials in their bills, and began by expecting to
find the nest inside the open building; but by and by I discovered that
they liked best of all a site down in a well! It seems a safe position
to begin with--as long as the nest contains nothing but eggs; but I ask
myself about the danger to the little ones when they become big enough
to be uneasy. If they are anything like young robins, for example, a
pitiful share of them must perish sixty feet underground. However, the
birds may be presumed to understand their own business better than any
outsider can teach it to them; and they unquestionably prefer the well.
Of the four pairs just mentioned, three have built in that position
(the wells, it should be understood, are not stoned), and the fourth
would have done likewise, I dare say, only that the well in their case
happens to be covered. As it is, the nest is on one of the joists of
a shed, and an impertinent stranger has been known to clamber up and
examine the eggs. “Oh, if that well had only been left open!” the birds
probably thought, as they saw what he was doing.
One kind of nest that is common here is set so out in sight that none
but a blind man could miss it, though from its color it might readily
be passed as an old one, not worth investigation. I do not remember
just how many I have seen,--half a dozen, it may be,--but I have never
looked into one. They cannot be looked into, unless they are first torn
to pieces.
I speak of the verdin’s nest. It is a marvel of workmanship: globular,
or roughly so, with an entrance neatly roofed over well down on one
side; constructed outwardly--I cannot speak beyond that, of course--of
countless small thorny sticks, and in size and general color resembling
a large paper-wasps’ nest. The bird, as I say, plants it in full sight,
in a leafless cat’s-claw bush, by preference, though I have seen one
beauty in a palo-verde tree.
My first one I was directed to by the outcries of the owner. The
foolish thing--if she _was_ foolish--actually went inside, and while
there scolded me. She took it for granted, I suppose, that I had seen
her go in, and was determined to let me know what she thought of such
despicable espionage. As a matter of fact, I was busy just then with a
rarer bird, and might have passed her pretty house unnoticed had she
held her peace. But the verdin is a nervously loquacious body, and
perhaps would rather talk than keep a secret. Such cases have been
heard of. Whatever else we may say of her, she is an architect of
something like genius.