A-Birding on a Bronco

It is unpleasant to be treated as if you needed detectives on your track. It strains your faith in human nature; the rest of the world must be very wicked if people suspect such...

It was plain that if I would get a study of these rare birds I must make a business of it. Slipping from the saddle, I sat down behind a bush and waited. When the bird came back...

SIX years ago, on my first visit to California, I found a dainty cup of a nest out in the oaks, but the name of its owner was a puzzle. On returning East I consulted those who a...

My next experiment was with some lamp wick to which I had tied bits of cotton. The titmouse took the cotton and would have taken the wicking, I think, if it had not been fastene...

As the memory of my morning rides down to the sycamore brings to mind the wonderful freshness of California's fog-cleared skies, so my sunset rides home from the great tree reca...

When the wren had become reconciled to us she worked rapidly, flying back and forth with material, followed by her mate, who sang while she was on the nest and chased away with...

THE bush-tits are cousins of the eastern chickadees, which is reason enough for liking them, although the California fruit growers have a more substantial reason in the way the...

Romulus, the collie, went up to the burrows and the old owls came swooping over his back screaming shrilly--the milkers told me that they often struck him so violently they nipp...

The trail from the ranch-house to the oaks was a line through the low grass in which grew yellow fly flowers and orange poppies; and over them every spring, day after day, proce...

As the birds worked, I was filled with forebodings by seeing a pair of wren-tits on the premises. They went about in the casual indifferent way sad experience had shown might co...

The next time we went down to the sycamore the bird was away, and it seemed as if the tree had been deserted. It was empty and uninteresting. Again I came, and this time the fat...

THE notes contained in this book were taken from March to May, 1889, and from March to July, 1894, at Twin Oaks in southern California. Twin Oaks is the post-office for the scat...

One afternoon in riding down the rows, I came face to face with two mites of hummingbirds seated on a branch. Their grayish green suits toned in with the color of the blue gums....

Young birds, Bluebird, 185. Brewer's Blackbird, 87. Burrowing Owl, 11-12. Bush-tit, 28, 110, 111. California Jay, 85. California Woodpecker, 69-80. feather tracts, 79. fed at lo...