But the story was not yet done, for after a little the meadow larks, of which there were many in the fields (with large flocks of horned larks, also), began singing. I was disappointed in the song, of the beauty of which I had formed the most exalted expectations, but consoled myself with believing that the birds were not Western meadow larks proper, but the Texan sub-species; otherwise I must conclude that their voices were still somewhat winter-bound, or at least, not yet keyed up to concert pitch.
A sparrow hawk beside the farmhouse before mentioned allowed me to stand almost under his low tree before he took wing, and when at last he did so I had a feeling that he was rather surprisingly long. I thought nothing more of the matter at the moment, but later, discovering by a reference to the handbook that a variety of Falco sparverius, somewhat larger and with a longer tail, had been described from this region, I concluded it probable, not to say certain, that my impression had been correct, and that the bird was not my old acquaintance of the East, but Falco sparverius deserticola. That would make the new birds of the morning four instead of three.
All this while, it must be understood, there was always the possibility that the train might start at any moment, no positive information upon that point being obtainable, so that I could move about only within a narrowly limited area. For a man thus tethered I was doing pretty well, whatever my unornithological fellow-travelers might think of my peculiar movements and attitudes. And to increase my enthusiasm, as I turned to go back to the train for dinner, in crossing an irrigation ditch (now dry), bordered with a dense thicket of low shrubs, I caught the tinkle of junco voices and presently a glimpse of white tail feathers. Now, then, since luck was the order of the day, it was as likely as not that these were not simple Junco hyemalis such as I had found at San Antonio, but one of several Western kinds that might, for aught I was aware, be looked for hereabout.
And so it proved. The birds were amazingly shy and secretive, but with patience I had three or four of them under my glass one after another; and they were noticeably different from our Eastern junco, and belonged, as the book’s description made clear, to the variety Junco hyemalis connectens, the intermediate junco, so (not very poetically) called.
I went to dinner with an excellent appetite, and afterward, the delay of the train still continuing, though with rumors that its end was near, I took one more turn in the field, and this time happened upon still another stranger, the handsomest of the day, so wonderfully handsome, though “handsome” is too cheap a word, that a man would have to go far to beat it—an Arizona Pyrrhuloxia; a bird—related to the cardinal grosbeak group—having no representative in the East. It would be a shame to attempt a description of it here at the end of a hurried sketch, but it made a glorious sixth in my list of the day’s findings. I shall see more of it, I trust, when I reach the territory to which it more distinctively belongs.
One other piece of good fortune I must not fail to chronicle, though I have omitted to do so in its proper place. Late in the forenoon, after I had given the bluebirds up for lost, I discovered them sitting, the six together, a lovely company, among the leaves of a cottonwood tree, as if they had taken shelter from the wind; and the book’s description was borne out: their throats were “purplish blue.”
The nine hours—for so long the embargo lasted—passed all too soon. If I could have had two or three hours of free wandering, who knows what other bright names I might have brought back? I went so far, indeed, as to inquire of the postmaster and variety storekeeper—a genial, smiling German—whether there was any place in the neighborhood where a stranger could be put up for the night; but he thought not, and advised me, not at all inhospitably, to stick to the train. And possibly, after all, I had found more rather than less for being compelled to beat a small space over again and again, instead of ranging farther afield. At all events, I had discovered a new use for ornithological enthusiasm, and I might almost add for railway accidents. I do not expect to find many birdier places, no matter where my wanderings take me, than that piece of dry, winter-bleached prairie about San Elizario.
OVER THE BORDER
On my first morning at El Paso, where, by good luck, as already explained, I arrived nine or ten hours behind time, I made an early start for Juarez, the Mexican city on the opposite bank of the Rio Grande. As I waited for the car at the corner of the street, a rosy house finch stood on the top of a telegraph pole overhead, singing ecstatically. The pretty creature, it is evident, is very much at home in this bustling city, at least in winter, for I was hardly in my room on the afternoon of my arrival before I heard its warble, and looking out of the window beheld the bird perched upon the eaves of a building across the way, where more than once since then I have heard and seen it. I am sorry to add that the English sparrow, its most unworthy rival, is here also, though for the moment in small numbers.
When the car came along, it proved to be an open one.