The winter visitors, of whom there are many, the greater part, alas, ordered here for “lung trouble,” have naturally been put out,—the more recent arrivals among them greatly astonished; they thought they were coming to a dry climate; but the residents proper, if not jubilant, have seemed at least reasonably well contented with the turn of affairs. There has been a general agreement, to be sure (one heard it on all hands), that it was “pretty muddy;” the wayfaring man, though a fool, could not dispute the statement; but so far as the prosperity of Arizona is concerned, there is no probability of an excessive rainfall. The more the better. So much is evident, even to an itinerant ornithologist, who may stand, if you will, for the wayfaring man before mentioned. What is not so clear to his darkened understanding is why the weather, no matter where one goes, should be every season so strangely exceptional, so utterly different from everything that the oldest inhabitant can remember.
MOBBED IN ARIZONA
I have never known a city more orderly seeming, more evidently peaceful and law-abiding than Tucson. Nowhere have I felt safer in wandering about by myself in all sorts of places, whether within the city proper or in the surrounding country. Here is a town, I have said to myself, where the citizen has small need of the policeman. And yet I know a man, most discreet and inoffensive (not to be shame-faced about it, let me admit that I speak of the bird-gazer himself), who a few days ago, for no assignable reason, was violently set upon, or, to speak plainly, mobbed, just outside the city limits.
Tucson, it should be premised, is a thriving, rapidly growing, modern city—though it has an antiquity to boast of, as well—in the midst of a desert. Its own site was originally part of the desert. The nearest large city is Los Angeles, California, five hundred miles distant; the nearest village, from what I hear, must be fifty or sixty miles away. Many roads run out of the town, but only to ranches scattered here and there along the two watercourses, or to mining camps farther off in the mountains. How a city ever came to grow up in a place so isolated, so seemingly destitute of anything like local advantages, is a riddle beyond my reading; but here it is, a city in the desert. North, south, east, or west, you may start where you will and go in what direction you please, and in fifteen minutes you will be out among the creosote bushes and the cacti, with nothing but a world of creosote and cactus—with perhaps a windmill and a roof rising above them somewhere in the distance—between you and the mountain range that bounds the horizon.
Well, this was exactly what I myself did one fine morning a week ago. I walked up the main street of the city, turned to the right, passed the territorial university buildings, and, taking a course northward toward the Santa Catalinas, sauntered carelessly forward, field-glass in hand, to see what might be stirring in the chaparral.
There would not be much, I knew. By daylight, at least, and in the winter season, the desert is not a stirring place. In the tracts where the creosote occupies the ground alone there proved, as usual, to be nothing; but presently I came to a place where two or three kinds of cactus were sprinkled among the creosote bushes, and newly sprung bluish-green grass (I call it grass, provisionally, although, like almost everything else hereabout, it has an unaccustomed look) carpeted or half-carpeted the ground. Here were the almost inevitable two cactus wrens (how overjoyed I was at the unexpected sight of my first one, at San Antonio, only three weeks ago, and how soon they have become an old story!) perched, one here, one there, at the top of branching cactus trees five or six feet high, calling antiphonally, as their habit is, in a coarse, unmusical, wearisome voice—the same churlish phase over and over and over. Nothing but the lonesomeness of the desert, surely, could ever make that grating, repetitive monotony a pleasure-giving sound. What the birds will do in the way of song when their musical season arrives, if it ever does,[14] is more than I know; but, belonging to be so musical a family, they ought to be capable of something better than this, for music, of all gifts, is a thing that runs in the blood. It would be a strange wren that could not express his happiness in some really lyrical manner.
In the same neighborhood, as has happened on several occasions, were a group of five or six sage thrashers. It was in this very place, indeed, that I first formed their acquaintance; and a sorely puzzled novelty-seeker I was on that eventful afternoon. The whole desert had seemed to be devoid of animal existence, I remember, when of a sudden there stood those strange birds on the ground before me. At the first instant they gave me an impression of overgrown titlarks. Then, when I watched them running at full speed over the grass, all at once pulling themselves up and standing erect with a snap of the tail, I said: “Why, they must be thrushes of some sort.” In attitude and action they were almost exactly like so many robins. The only striking characteristic of their plumage was the peculiarly dense streaking of the under-parts.
The mystery was heightened for me by the fact that they maintained an absolute silence. Indeed, although I have seen them many times since then, I have yet to hear them utter the first syllable. For aught I can positively affirm, they may every one be mutes. I chased them about for half an hour, scrutinizing the least detail of their dress, all the while wondering what on earth to call them, till finally it came over me, I could never tell how, that they must be sage thrashers.
“Yes,” I said, “Oroscoptes! I remember that that bird is described as having a short bill.”
It was a true guess; and in a strange country a man makes so many poor guesses that he may reasonably boast a little over every good one. To this day, I am bound to add, the birds, with their short bills, their extraordinary quickness upon their feet, and their upright carriage, have to my eye very little the appearance of thrashers. Perhaps when I hear them sing, my feeling may alter.