tage as the white border of the
kingbird's does in similar flights. They made a bulky untidy nest in the
oaks by the barn, using a quantity of string borrowed from the ranchman.
Their voices were high-keyed and shrill with an impatient emphasis, and
at a distance suggested the shrill yelping of the coyote. _Kee'-ah,
kee-kee' kee'-ah_, they would cry. The wolves were so often heard around
the ranch-house that in the early morning I have sometimes mistaken the
birds for them.

One of the favorite hunting-grounds of the bee-birds was the orchard,
where they must have done a great deal of good destroying insects. They
were quarrelsome birds, and were often seen falling through the air
fighting vigorously. I saw one chase a sparrow hawk and press it so hard
that the hawk cried out lustily. The ranchman's son told me of one
bee-bird who defended his nest with his life. Two crows lit in a tree
where the flycatcher had a nest containing eggs. The crows had
difficulty in getting to the tree to begin with, for the bee-birds
fought them off; and though they lighted, were soon dislodged and chased
down the vineyard. The man was at work there, and as the procession
passed over his head the bee-bird dove at the crow; the crow struck back
at him, crushing his skull, and the flycatcher dropped through the air,
dead! The other bee-bird followed its dead mate to the ground, and then,
without a cry, flew to a tree and let the crows go on their way.

The bee-bird was one of the noisiest birds about the ranch-house, but
commoner than he; in fact, the most abundant bird, next to the linnet
and blackbird, was the California chewink, or, as the ranchman
appropriately called him, the 'brown chippie;' for he does not look like
the handsome chewink we know, but is a fat, dun brown bird with a thin
_chip_ that he utters on all occasions. He is about the size of the
eastern robin, and, except when nesting, almost as familiar. There were
brown chippies in the door-yard, brown chippies around the barns, and
brown chippies in the brush till one got tired of the sight of them.

The temptations that come to conscientious observers are common to
humanity, and one of the subtlest is to undervalue what is at hand and
overvalue the rare or distant. Unless a bird is peculiarly interesting,
it requires a definite effort to sit down and study him in your own
dooryard, or where he is so common as to be an every-day matter. The
chippies were always sitting aro