no long hours to sit
waiting on a camp-stool, and only here and there a treetop to 'sky' the
wandering birds. The only difficulty was to choose your intimates.

Canello and I had our regular beat, down past the blooming quince and
apricot orchard, along the brush-covered side of the valley where the
migrants flocked, around the circle through a great vineyard in the
middle of the valley, past a pond where the feathered settlers gathered
to bathe, and so back home to the oaks again.

I liked to start out in the freshness of the morning, when the fog was
breaking up into buff clouds over the mountains and drawing off in veils
over the peaks. The brush we passed through was full of glistening
spiders' webs, and in the open the grass was overlaid with disks of
cobweb, flashing rainbow colors in the sun.

As we loped gayly along down the curving road, a startled quail would
call out, "Who-are-you'-ah? who-are-you'-ah?" and another would cry
"quit" in sharp warning tones; while a pair would scud across the road
like little hens, ahead of the horse; or perhaps a covey would start up
and whirr over the hillside. The sound of Canello's flying hoofs would
often rouse a long-eared jack-rabbit, who with long leaps would go
bounding over the flowers, to disappear in the brush.

The narrow road wound through the dense bushy undergrowth known as
'chaparral,' and as Canello galloped round the sharp curves I had to
bend low under the sweeping branches, keeping alert for birds and
animals, as well as Mexicans and Indians that we might meet.

This corner of the valley was the mouth of Twin Oaks Canyon, and was a
forest of brush, alive with birds, and visited only by the children
whose small schoolhouse stood beside the giant twin oak from which the
valley post-office was named. Flocks of migrating warblers were always
to be found here; flycatchers shot out at passing insects; chewinks
scratched among the dead leaves and flew up to sing on the branches;
insistent vireos cried _tu-whip' tu-whip' tu-whip' tu-wee'-ah_, coming
out in sight for a moment only to go hunting back into the impenetrable
chaparral; lazuli buntings sang their musical round; blue jays--blue
squawkers, as they are here called--went screaming harshly through the
thicket; and the clear ringing voice of the wren-tit ran down the scale,
now in the brush, now echoing from the bowlder-strewn hills above. But
the king of the chaparral was the great brown thrasher. His loud