rollicking song and careless independent ways, so suggestive of his
cousin, the mockingbird, made him always a marked figure.

There was one dense corner of the thicket where a thrasher lived, and I
used to urge Canello through the tangle almost every morning for the
pleasure of sharing his good spirits. He was not hard to find, big brown
bird that he was, standing on the top of a bush as he shouted out
boisterously, _kick'-it-now, kick'-it-now, shut'-up shut'-up, dor'-a-thy
dor'-a-thy_; or, calling a halt in his mad rhapsody, slowly drawled out,
_whoa'-now, whoa'-now_. After listening to such a tirade as this, it
was pleasant to come to an opening in the brush and find a band of
gentle yellow-birds leaning over the blossoms of the white
forget-me-nots.

There were a great many hummingbirds in the chaparral, and at a certain
point on the road I was several times attacked by one of the pugnacious
little warriors. I suppose we were treading too near his nest, though I
was not keen-eyed enough to find it. From high in the air, he would come
with a whirr, swooping down so close over our heads that Canello started
uneasily and wanted to get out of the way. Down over our heads, and then
high up in the air, he would swing back and forth in an arc. One day he
must have shot at us half a dozen times, and another day, over a spot in
the brush near us,--probably, where the nest was,--he did the same thing
a dozen times in quick succession.

In the midst of the brush corner were a number of pretty round oaks, in
one of which the warblers gathered. My favorite tree was in blossom and
alive with buzzing insects, which may have accounted for the presence of
the warblers. While I sat in the saddle watching the dainty birds decked
out in black and gold, Canello rested his nose in the cleft of the tree,
quite unmindful of the busy warblers that flitted about the branches,
darting up for insects or chasing down by his nose after falling
millers.

One morning the ranchman's little girl rode over to school behind me on
Canello, pillion fashion. As we pushed through the brush and into the
opening by the schoolhouse, scattered over the grass sat a flock of
handsome black-headed grosbeaks, the western representative of the
eastern rose-breast, looking, in the sun, almost as red as robins. They
had probably come from the south the night before. As we watched, they
dispersed and sang sweetly in the oaks and brush.

[Illustration: Black-he