July, 1912 BIRDS oF THE COTTONWOO1) {;ROVES 115 for its prey; Pygmy Nuthatches chattered softly, vireos sang their leisurely songs, and one hunted so near that its eye-ring, lores, and wing bars stood out conspicu ously; while a preoccupied Orange-crowned Warbler conting from the greenery toward the light almost flew against my arm hovering unsuspectingly close to my face. As the busy throng hunted through the cottonwood tops, a pair of Cat- birds mewed in the thicket below, and Western House Wrens and Green-tailed Towhees went about their lowly business. Among the visiting migrants one soli- tary Rocky Mountain Creeper was seen on a cottonwood trunk. Another grove of the beautiful cottonwoods near the Taos Pueblo, the Glorieta of the Indians, was perhaps the most notable that we saw. The trees had seamed patriarchal their finely cut leafage low to the ground. Many of the great trees had twin trunks, some stood alone, others in brotherly groups. An m?ist when visiting cmnp talked enthusiastically of the subtle tints of their bark and the effect of afternoon sunshine permeating their delicately foliaged green tops. The cot- tonwood trunks rose from a dense thicket of undergrowth --scrub oak, juniper, and wild plum, tangled with rose and overgrown with poison ivy and clematis whose festoon- ing vines made banks of green and white bloom. In this thicket in which our camp was a cleared circle, birds abounded. Spurred Towbees scratched among the leaves mid flew up to sing on the plmn bushes, and one black-headed parent was discovered busily feeding trunks and their high-arching branches cartie.! Fig. 43. THE NARRO1,V-LEAFED COTTONWOO1) Courtesy of Biological Survey grown young who were following him around teasing with hungry insistartec. A sinall Wright Flycatcher, when not too busy feed- ing its young in the nest over our tent, kept up a pleasant see-wick, ?ee- wick. see-wick, and szvee-hoo, while a Western Flycatcher reiterated eat-it, cat-it, eat-it, and vireos and many other small feathered householders sang and hunted in the shade of the tree tops in the sunny lnornings, filling the grove with their delightful music. A teasing song that I did not recognize, one morning led me into the dense growth bordering the irrigation ditch of the Taos Indians. When whistled to. the invisible bird answered back promptly---or so it seemed between songs mov- ing about getting his breakfast. But where was he ? When finally discovered, his ([ark gray head and breast were cut off so sharply from the yellow belly that went
