Students of Archeology Under U.A. Excavate a New Digging

19. The fine earth found within pottery and in other productive areas at the ruin is often sacked and taken to the laboratory to be sifted for minute artifacts.

20. Long plank tables outside the laboratory are marked off in sections by chalk lines in relation to shard locations in a particular room for more complete analysis.

21. Of course such a project produces much valueless repetitive bits of pottery and this waste material ends up on the camp shard heap beside the laboratory building.

25. Even a haircut might be in order and Dr. Haury, with a master's touch in many accomplishments as well as archaeology, might very likely be seen to officiate.

26. Blisters, sprains, bruises, cuts or any more severe mishaps may receive proper attention at the camp infirmary as a physician is on hand at all times.

27. The dinner gong at five-thirty gets immediate response and camp personnel converge on the dining room for a jolly, well-earned and well-balanced meal.

31. Such a hard-working, serious and competent group of students must relax, too, and an occasional bull-session or a weekend campfire sing or square dance fills the bill.

32. Day's end, and students gaze across the pine-fringed prairie where Apache cattle drink from water holes scooped out by industrious brown hands many centuries ago.

ARIZONA'S CACTUS

A queer noise was issuing from the mesquites. The thick growth, bordering the edge of a little draw, dipped over the rim and hung precariously above a jumble of rocks below. I maneuvered as best I could between the thorny branches, opuntia clumps and reaching fingers of cholla, but it was no easy matter.

I stopped and once more I attempted to place the sound exactly. It moved here and there but always tantalizingly near. A strange guttural it was, almost frog-like in character, then it sounded as if someone was clacking small stones together. Seldom had my curiosity run as high and I was fearful that it would stop altogether and the maker of it vanish.

Then suddenly, not five feet away, a head and eyes protruded from the mesquite. The sound came directly from this apparition, the same throaty "chut" which I had sought. And here at last was the producer of it. . . a brown-backed, spotted-breasted bird which emerged into plain view and sat peering at me as if tired of so much bumbling about. It was a Cactus Wren.That day among the mesquite thickets was my first experience with this fascinating dweller of the desert. I have seen many of them since but one's first impression is always indelible, and no individual since has given me quite the thrill which that one did.

Certainly, there is much to attract one to this peculiar species, and it should appeal to Arizonans particularly, for it is their State Bird. Made such by popular acclaim, it is an eminently fitting choice. Though originally described, in 1881, with its type locality as Laredo, Texas, it is as essentially and characteristically Arizonan as the cactus among which it lives. Doubtless as familiar to prospectors in lonely camps as it was to roaming Apaches and dusty cavalrymen, it must have seemed to them to be an animated bit of sand, rock and cactus in itself. It is no less so today, and where it lived then, it does now, for the desert is the place to look for it.

Not the least of its claim to ornithological fame is the fact of size. It is a giant of its kind, far larger than any other of American wrens. Even as the saguaro towers over thecholla, so does this great wren dwarf its relatives. Twice indeed as large as some, for its eight inches of length is just that to the four of the tiny Winter Wren.

WREN

Though few birds are as aptly named in English, the amateur might well gasp at its scientific cognomen. This is no less than-Heleodytes brunneicapillus! Why such a jawbreaker as that? Actually for a very good reason. Because scientists have a universal language and a student coming to Arizona from South Africa, Australia or Japan would know exactly what that jaw-breaker signified whereas he might well not know what was meant by a local name. And what does it mean anyway? Well, rendered into everyday English we could call it “a brown-haired (feathered) lowland inhabitant.” And that is exactly what it is! “Cactus,” however, suits it better for all comers. Amid that formidable, if attractive growth, it lives its way of life. How it manages to do so unscathed is something of a mystery, but the needle spines of cholla, the curved barbs of this or or that kind of cactus, are as nothing to this bird. It lives happily behind their protective panoply.

Probably many a motorist, speeding through desert country, has noticed and wondered at what look like rounded bundles of hay amid the cactus growth. So numerous are they in certain areas that they would hardly be thought of as nests, yet so they are, and Cactus Wren nests at that.

Take the trouble to get out of the car some day, and examine one closely. You will see that it is a globular mass of grasses and weeds, reared upon a foundation of thorny wigs, skillfully woven and matted into the shape of a chemical retort, or flask. At one end will be an entrance hole, leading into the dark interior, and if you could insert your fingers among the protecting sentries of cactus spines, you would feel the downy softness of the interior to be produced by fine grasses and feathers. Surely, here is an avian home not to be investigated with careless abandon! Considering the multitudinous natural enemies which birds have, is it any wonder that this one places its home where it does?

Perhaps there will be eggs in the nest you examine. If you could get them all out, you would see that they might be anywhere from four to six in number, nearly an inch long by three-quarters wide, and though basically a creamy white, so covered are they with fine reddish-brown dots that they appear to be of such color.

Unless you look at the right time, however, you will not find eggs at all. Maybe there will be a thriving family of youngsters, or maybe there will be nothing at all. If you are really consumed with an intense desire to see what the eggs of a Cactus Wren look like, then, if you live in the southern part of Arizona, around Tucson perhaps, look for them as early as the middle of March. If you live in Phoenix, or perhaps to the north and east, watch for them in midApril, and if you take a mountain trip you might even find them in late June. So you see, there is quite a range of time. But, among other attractions, Arizona is a land of ups and downs, and ups and downs mean a good deal when one is looking for birds (and eggs).

Actually, a great many nests of this wren, wherever you find them, or when, won't have anything in them! Sharing a family trait, the Cactus Wren builds many more nests than it needs. Strange, isn't it? Yet so it is. Perhaps a pair of birds will start and work on half a dozen nests before really completing one and using it. This seems wasted effort if we look at it from a human point of view but then, humans are not wrens, and wrens are not human. They know what they are doing, and sometimes it does not seem that we do! And by the way, don't ever let's try to ascribe human attributes to birds as so many do. They do not possess them and they cannot, being of what we call the "lower animals," and certainly they are wonderful enough in their own right without our attempts to invest them with our frailties and what have you!However, to return to the subject in hand it has been well shown that "extra" nests of the Cactus Wren are often used as winter roosting places, or havens in times of heavy storms. The activity of the birds in the fall of the

OPPOSITE PAGE

"CACTUS WREN" BY HARRY L. AND RUTH CROCKETT. The Cactus Wren, the large wren of the desert, is heavily spotted on throat and breast. It was noticed this individual stopped an instant on this cactus branch after each feeding of its young. The Speed Graphic was set 18 inches from the spot. The lens was Ektar f:4.7 127 mm. set at f:8 at 1/50-bright sunlight. The photographer was 30 feet away and released the shutter with a remote control when the bird returned.