Birds of the Desert

BIRDS of the Desert A REVIEW

A MODEST, YET pleasant and entertaining volume is one which was published this winter by Gusse Thomas Smith, entitled: "Birds of the Desert." Mrs. Smith is no stranger to the readers of Arizona Highways for her contributions have graced these pages a number of times the past year or so. "Birds of the Desert" will be a valuable guidebook to the visitor coming into our desert for the first time and eager to know it more intimately. The book, a slender volume of sixty-six pages, tells briefly of the desert birds and attempts to describe them in such a manner as to make them familiar to the desert visitor. The book is distinguished by Mrs. Smith's accurate and apt description and by the beautiful illustrations of Harriet Morton Holmes. Some of the sketches are shown here and indicate the thoroughness and scholarly approach with which the artist introduces us to the feathered friends whose domain is our desert. The author of the "Birds of the Desert" knows the desert very well. During the winter she is hostess at the Arizona Biltmore and her talks on desert flora and fauna are both entertaining and accurate and are always enjoyed by guests. "All birds are happy and freely tell you so," she writes in "Greetings" to her readers. "That's the best sort of friend to cultivate, and in the case of the birds, it is easy to do. Learn their names and how to identify them and they are yours forever with no obligation on your part. They do all the giving. "Bird life in Arizona is surprisingly diversified but so is Arizona. Over four hundred kinds of birds find their favorite altitude, climate, and essential food within the state. In the lower Sonoran lifezone, which is the desert country below three thousand feet, much of the state bird population lives permanently, stays for the winter or the summer, or drops in casually for visits. "The most frequently seen of these desert birds are introduced informally in this modest booklet. With a minimum of effort you can see them all and know them by name in a few weeks. As an example of how she presents her birds, we quote Mrs. Smith's short but quite accurate description of one of Arizona's strangest and most interesting bird, the Roadrunner. Now there's a bird for you the desert clown, unique to this region and like nothing you ever saw on land or sea. The Roadrunner is a ground dweller of the cuckoo family, two feet long, with a bill longer than his head and an appetite longer than his tail. His wings are stubby and ineffective for distance flying, his plumage always looks shabby, and raising or lowering his bristletipped top-knot, he always looks absurdly surprised. Around his mocking eyes he has a naked yellow ring seemingly emphasized with mascara on his stiff eyelashes-yes, eyelashes. He is streaked with brown and white, glossed with steel blue, changing toward the tail to bronzy green. His long tail feathers are blueblack and green, tipped with white. His throat and underparts are a dirty white, dashed with black. You'd think with all that to work with he could look quite dressy, but he never does. A bedouin, a true son of the desert-but never a vagabond. At first sight he appears tail heavy-but his best stunts depend on that tail. He is a speed demon and will race anything from a horned toad to a Lincoln Zephyr; and when he is quite sure he has won, he will turn off to the side, throw his tail in the air, dig his toes in the ground, and look back in impudent astonishment. Though wild and lawless he makes an amusing pet, not at all shy, ready to eat any thing he can swallow, and an inveterate showoff quite a ventriloquist at times. Ranchers usually like to have him around the barnyard and all Mexicans love him better than any other bird, their loyal "Paisano."

zona's unique desert - dwellers, the Roadrunner: ROADRUNNER CHAPARRAL COCK Geococcyx californianus

The nesting habits of roadrunners are about as irregular and unusual as their other traits. Really tame ones will invade a desert shack and try to settle behind the woodbox; or, in the barn; though under usual conditions they'll throw together an immense mass of sticks and trash on the ground under low brush, or in the lower branches of mesquite or palo verde trees. They trample this down in the middle after a fashion, and line the depression with snake skins, feathers, any soft thing they can steal off nearby clotheslines. At irregular intervals from three to nine elliptical white eggs appear in the midst of this confusion. They are so erratic about delivering eggs and the temperature of the desert is so warm that babies of various ages get mixed up with perfectly fresh eggs and mother's work is never done. Although they never put on any style and are such a rough and tumble lot, Roadrunners are courageous and self-supporting and do an enormous amount of good in the world. They eat incredible numbers of the very pests man wants most to be rid of grasshoppers, crickets, caterpillars, beetles, centipedes, mice, lizards and, most important of all, snakes-lots of snakes, little ones, big ones all kinds.

It is a thrilling, three hour show to see a Roadrunner kill a big rattler, literally worrying it to death and dive bombing over its head to deliver stab after stab at the base of the brain. If the victim is not too large, not much longer than the bird, it is another three hour show to watch him swallow it head first. It is a desperate business and a lot of snake is visible a long time I could never quite stay to the end. Roadrunners live the year round in a chosen locality, developing a regular schedule in covering their beat. One passed in front of my desert cottage at mid-morning every day, with practically no variation of time, for several months; and I, as regularly, watched for him. He was always in a terrific hurry and intensely concentrated on finding food lots of food. He and his whole family were ridden by slave driving appetites and the more I watched him fighting to live, the better I realized that if he occasionally stopped at a meadowlark's nest, he was forced by necessity rather than innate meanness. His own most dangerous enemy, the coyote, is a really mean hombre, who enjoys marauding nests. (At least I think so, but I don't know him so well.) "Birds of the Desert" sells for one dollar. It's surprising what you can get for your money these days. R. C.

The Wilderness of Unreality

(Continued from Page Twenty-one) Being identical with that of the big succulent. Abandoned nest pockets of woodpeckers and flickers are sometimes taken over by the tiny Elf and Pygmy owls. Pop is very proud of several photos he made of a Great Horned Owl.

The fame of the giant cactus and of the Cactus Forest which is the heart of Saguaro National Monument attracts thousands of visitors each year. Because of his multiplicity of duties, Custodian Egermayer has had little opportunity to provide them with the information about the monument and its attractions which he feels that they should have in order to enjoy it fully. However, with the aid of Mrs. Egermayer and of Pop Frost, V. E. (Visitor Extraordinary), the quality and scope of interpretive service is on the up grade. Don is looking forward to the time when the construction of an overlook containing exhibits, and a contact station where a ranger-naturalist may be stationed to meet and aid every visitor who enters the monument, may be completed at a site over looking the great Cactus Forest.

The present travel season is recording an advance in the service made available to visitors through the assignment to the monument for the first time of a seasonal ranger. This is Ranger Francis H. Elmore, formerly of Casa Grande National Monument, near Coolidge. Pop Frost is enthusiastic over the improved service to the public, but he is beginning to talk about the "good old days" when Saguaro was a lone-post monument. But, after all, it doesn't matter to him; he has his camera, and he states emphatically that the surface has only been scratched on the photographic possibilities of Saguaro National Monument. He knows that camera fodder, unlike other kinds, becomes more valuable with greater use.

Perhaps you will see Pop, some evening, when you drive out to the view overlook about sunset. He will be standing beside his tripod on a point of vantage overlooking that weird leafless forest where a million arms are uplifted in silent tribute to the passing day. You will not be able to recognize him by Illinois plates on his car, for he is now an enthusiastic Arizonan. But there is something about him that is unmistakable; that look of relaxed calm which comes to men of the desert as they gaze out over the wide spaces while the shadows lengthen. As the thin light of the setting sun gradually pales, the sea of uplifted arms seems to merge, imperceptibly with the drab grey of desert knoll, and wash, and flat. But still Pop lingers, waiting. Dusk deepens. Listen! First a shrill yapping from yonder hill; then the full throated chorus of desert music as the coyotes greet the near approach of night.

With a smile of satisfaction, Pop folds his tripod and puts his camera in the car. But the smile is not only because he has come to the end of another perfect day for desert photography, but because he realizes that as long as there is a Saguaro National Monument, the voice of the desert will never be stilled.

Dick Wick Hall and His Town Salome

(Continued from Page Thirteen) and took French leave. These colorful little fellows and the lories, of which there are several kinds, eat honey and fruit-fitting food for birds that look like flying flowers.

There are many varieties of quail and pheasants, ducks, cranes, fifty-five species of parrots, even owls, and peafowls, as well as the more exotic birds.

Mrs. Dennis' special pet is a big white Cockatoo called "Rosie", about whom she has a store of anecdotes. He has a fondness for the ladies. calling them all "Sweetheart." He imitates the train that passes through Salome not far in back of the aviary, and he used to pick the lock on his cage regularly until they found one he couldn't jimmy.

If you take time, you can go about a block from the aviary, across the railroad tracks, and see Dick Wick Hall's home, and right by it, his grave, for he died in 1926, and was buried where he enjoyed living and laughing, "Where She Danced."

Seri Indians On Tiburon Island

Since Santo Blanco, the aged medicine man from whom Coolidge had obtained so many songs and stories, had died in 1940, and since his successor lay at Poso Coyote on the mainland, dying from injuries received in a brawl, Mrs. Harrington was fortunate in securing information on religious beliefs from a young man at Tecomate. He and other Seri specifically requested that this information be held in strict confidence, little can be said here other than that the people have a very rich and a very highly visualized religious structure. This man made elaborate drawings in colored pencils, of various aspects of this, in strangely brilliant colors were in contrast to the pastel shades which he used in other drawings. His wife and other women drew face-painting designs in colors, and explained their meanings. The child Antonio Moreno was perhaps the most talented of all, and he drew one design, of four interlocked sea-bass, in colors, which was astonishing in its sophistication and perfection, especially since neither he nor the other Seri had used pencils before.

With the death of Santo Blanco, much of the ancient lore and many songs were lost forever to the Seri. It is probable that the Fish Dance can never again be given in its