The lark and flicker.
Jays and magpies.
Water-fowl.
The dwarf dove common to Sonora, the oven-bird, the red grosbeak, and many other of the smaller birds known to civilization, are found on the desert; but apparently with no special faculty for overcoming its hardships. This is due perhaps to the fact that they are not always there—are not exclusively desert-birds. Nor do any of the migratory birds belong to the desert, though they stop here for weeks at a time in their flights north or south. At almost any season of the year one sees the cow-blackbird and the smaller crow-blackbird. The mocking-bird comes only in the spring and fall, and the lark in early summer. The lark looks precisely like the Eastern bird, but his note is changed; whereas the flicker has changed the color under his wings from yellow to pink, but not his note. The robin is no whit different from the front-lawn robin of our childhood; and the bobolink rising from salt-bush and yucca, singing as he rises, is the bobolink of ancient days. At times there are troops of magpies that come and go across the waste, and at other times troops of blue-jays. And high in air through the warmth of spring and the cold of autumn there are great flocks of ducks, geese, brant, divers, shags, willet, curlew, swinging along silently to the southern or northern waterways. They seldom pause, even when following the Colorado River, unless in need of water. On the mesas and uplands one sometimes sees a group of sand-hill cranes walking about and indulging in a crazy dance peculiarly their own, but the sight is no longer a common one.
Beetles and worms.
Fighting destruction by breed.
And again the prey—what of the prey? Has Nature left the beetles, the bugs, the worms, the bees, completely at the pleasure of the bird’s beak? No; not completely, though it must be acknowledged that she has not provided much defensive armor for them individually. She incases her beautiful blue and yellow beetles in hard shells that other insects cannot break through, but they are flimsy defences against the mocking-bird. To bugs and worms and bees she gives perhaps a sting, deadly enough when thrust into a spider, but useless again when used in defence against a cactus-thrush. And this is where Nature shows her absolute indifference to the life or the death of the individual. She allows the bugs and beetles to be slaughtered like the mackerel in the sea. But she is a little more careful about preserving the species. And how does she do this without preserving the individual? Why, simply by increasing the number of individuals, by breed, by fertility, by multiplicity. Thousands are annually slaughtered; yes, but thousands are annually bred. What matter about their lives or deaths provided they do not increase or decrease as a species!
The blue and green beetles.
Butterflies.
Design and character.