d had laid four
eggs.

But when getting to feel like an old friend of the family, on riding
down one day I found the nest lying in the dust of the road broken and
despoiled. It made me as unhappy as if the outlaws had been
unimpeachable bird citizens--which comes of knowing both sides of a
person's character! Do birds hand down traditions of ill luck? However
it may be, five years later I found the nest of a pair in a dark mat of
mistletoe at the end of a high oak branch, which was a much safer place
than the low willow.

While I was watching the first shrike family, Canello had two scares.
Once when we were standing still by the willow we heard what sounded
like a rattlesnake springing its rattle. The nervous horse pricked up
his ears, raised his head, and looked in the grass as if he saw snakes,
and though I succeeded in quieting him, when we went home he started at
every stick and was ready to shy at every shadow. Another morning he saw
a Mexican riding along by the vineyard, a man with a very dark face and
a red shirt. Canello acted much as he had when hearing the rattlesnake,
and did not quiet down till horse and rider were out of sight. The
ranchman told me he had been cruelly treated by the Mexican who broke
him, so perhaps it was another case of association of ideas.

East of the willows, and separated from them by the dark green mallows
and bright yellow California forget-me-nots, was the sycamore where the
shrike was driven off by the blackbirds. Here a little brown wren had
taken up her abode. The nest was in a dead limb with a lengthwise slit,
and a scoop at the end like an apple-corer, so when one of the wrens
flew down its hole with a stick, the twig stuck out of the crack as she
ran along with it. She quite won my heart by her frank way of meeting
her landlady. Instead of flying off, she looked me over and then quietly
sat down in her doorway to wait for her mate.

On the road to my sycamores was a deserted whitewashed adobe. The place
had become overgrown with weeds, vines, and bushes, and was taken
possession of by squirrels and birds. Nature had reclaimed it, covering
its ugly scars with garlands, and making it bloom under her tender
touch. One morning, as I rode by, a black ph[oe]be was perched on the
old adobe chimney of the little house, while his mate sat on the board
that covered the well, in a way that made it easy to jump to a
conclusion. When she flew up to the acacia beside the well and lo