There were half a dozen places in the valley, irrigated by the spring rains, where I was always sure of finding birds. Among them, on the west side, was the big sycamore, standing at the lower end of the valley; while above, in the northwest corner, was the mouth of Twin Oaks canyon where the migrants flocked in the brush around the large twin oak that overlooked the little old schoolhouse. On the east side was the Ughland canyon, at the mouth of which the little lover and his neighbors nested; while below it straggled the line of sycamores that followed the Ughland stream down through my ranch. But up at the head of the valley beyond the ranch-house was the most delightful place of all. There I was always sure of finding interesting nests to study.
Surrounded by a waste of chaparral, it was a little oasis of great blooming live-oaks, and in their shade I used often to spend the hot afternoon hours. In the spring the water that flowed down the hills at the head of the valley formed a fresh mountain stream that ran down the Oden[160] canyon and so on through the centre of this grove, feeding the oaks and spreading out to enrich the valley below. In summer, like the rest of the canyon streams, only its dry sandy bed remained. Then, when the meadows were oppressively hot, my leafy garden was a shady bower to linger in. Its long drooping branches hung to the ground, dainty yellow warblers flitted about the golden tassels of the blossoming trees, and the air was full of the happy songs of mated birds.
A SHADY BOWER A SHADY BOWER
The trail from the ranch-house to the oaks was a line through the low grass in which grew yellow fly flowers and orange poppies; and over them every spring, day after day, processions of migrating butterflies drifted slowly up the canyon. At the entrance of the garden was a sentinel oak whose dark green foliage contrasted well with the yellow flowers in the grass outside. It was the chosen hunting-ground of many birds. Its dead upper branches offered the bee-birds and woodpeckers an unobstructed view of passing insects, and gave the jays and flickers a chance to overlook the brush, and take their bearings. The lower limbs offered perches where doves might come to rest, finches to chatter, and chewinks to sing; while its hanging boughs and elm-like feathered sides attracted wandering warblers and songful wrens.
The happy days spent among these beautiful[161] California oaks are now far in the past, but as I sit in my study in the East and dream back over those hours my mind is filled with memory pictures. Sauntering through this oaken gallery, each tree recalls some pleasant hour—the sight of a new bird, the sound of a new song, the prolonged delight of some cozy home that I watched till accepted as a friend, when the little family's fears and joys were my own.
That big double oak, spreading across the middle of the garden, was the haunted tree whose blue ghost drove away the pewees and gnatcatchers after they had begun to build; though the vireos and bush-tits braved it out, and the tiny hummer and gentle dove were not afraid to perch there. This was hummingbird lane—that small oak held the nest in which the two wee nestlings sat up like Jacks-in-the-box; these blue sage bushes growing in the sand were the ones the honey bees and hummers used to haunt, the hummers probing each lavender lip as they circled round the whorls; in front of this bush I saw a fairy dancer perform his airy minuet,—swing back and forth, and then sweep up in the air to dive whirring down with gorget puffed out and tail spread wide; and here, when watching a procession of ants, I discovered a tiny hummingbird building in a drooping branch that overhung the trail. That dead limb was the perch of a wood pewee, a silent grave bird[162] with a sad call, who flew on when he was still only a lonely stranger. That oak top was made memorable by the sight of a flaming oriole, though he came on a cold foggy morning and answered my calls with a broken song and a half-hearted scold as he sat with his feathers ruffled up about him. Under the low spreading branches of that tree the chewinks used to scratch—I can hear the brown leaves rustle now—the branches were so low that, if the shy birds flew up to rest from their labors, they could quickly drop down and disappear in the brush.
On ahead, where the garden narrows to the trail between the walls of brush, when I was hidden behind a screen of branches, the timid white-crowned sparrows used to venture out, hopping along quietly or stopping to sing and pick up seeds on the path. Back a few steps was the tree where the bush-tits came to build their second nest after the roof of the first one fell in; the nest which hung on such a low limb that I watched it from the sand beneath, looking up through the branches at the blue sky, the canyon walls covered with sun-whitened bowlders, and the turkey buzzards circling over the mountains.
Green-tailed Chewink. (One half natural size.) Green-tailed Chewink.
(One half natural size.)
Just there, in that small open place between the trees,—how well I remember the afternoon,—I saw a new bird come out of the bushes; the green-tailed chewink he proved to be, on his[163] way back to the Rocky Mountains. He was a beautiful stranger with a soft glossy coat touched off with yellowish green, while his high-bred gentle manners have made me remember him with affectionate interest all these years. Across the garden I heard my first song from that unique rhapsodist, the yellow-breasted chat. The same place marks another interesting experience. While I was sitting in the crotch of an oak a thrasher came out of the brush into an open space in front of me. Her feathers were disordered and apparently she had come from her nest. She walked with wings tight at her sides and her tail up at an angle well out of the way of the rustling leaves; altogether a neat alert figure that contrasted sharply with the lazy brown chippie which appeared just then in characteristic negligée, its wings hanging and tail dragging on the ground. The thrashers of Twin Oaks have bills that are curved like a sickle, and this bird used her tool most skillfully. Instead of scratching up the leaves and earth with her feet as chewinks and sparrows do, the thrasher used her bill almost exclusively. First she cleared a space by scraping the leaves away, moving her bill through them rapidly from side[164] to side. Then she made two holes in the ground, probing deep with her long bill. After taking what she could get from the second hole, she went back to the first again, as if to see if anything had come to the surface there. Then she lay down on the sand to sun herself and acted as though going to take a sun bath, when suddenly she discovered me and fled.
When watching the bird at work I got a pretty picture in the round disk of my opera-glass. The glass was focused on the digging thrasher, but a goldfinch came into the picture and pulled at some stems for its nest and a cottontail ran rapidly across from rim to rim. I lifted the glass to follow him and saw him go trotting down the path between the bushes.
The thrasher's curved bill gives a most ludicrous look to the bird when singing. He looks as if he were trying to turn himself inside out. I once saw an adult thrasher tease its mate for food, and wondered how it would be possible for one curved bill to feed another curved bill; but a few days later I came on a family of young, and discovered for myself that they have straight bills; a most curious and interesting instance of adaptation.
At the head of the garden stands a tree that always reminds me of the horses I rode in California. I watched my first bush-tit's nest under it, with Canello grazing near; and five years later[165] watched another bush-tit's nest there, sitting in the crotch of the oak with Mountain Billy looking over my shoulder. Although Billy was, in his prime, a bucking mustang, he became more of a petted companion than Canello had been; and when we were out alone to............