Page:Condor7(1).djvu/23

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22 THE CONDOR VOL. VII male was singing nearby, though not so vigorously as usual while in that neigh- borhood. After chirping qnietly near the place, the female flitted away and I saw her no more. I conclnded that nest-building was then in progress, and decided to leave the warblers for awhile. Two weeks later, while at the same place I had seen the female carrying her nest material, I engaged the attention of two warblers, a male and a female. Dur- ing the hour I spent searching the shrubbery near the place, the two birds mani- fested much uneasiness, though chirping in their quiet fashion. I am as certain that there was a nest in the neighoorhood as anyone can be without ocular demonstration, but I failed to find it. though I searched both among the dead leaves on the ground and every bit of bush within fifty yards of that place as a center. During all this period, from June 20 to nearJy the end of July, the males were in song, and were only silenced by the parching heat of the sultry July after- noons. Itseems perfectly safe to assume that this warbler nests in Montana in the Flathead regiou, and further observation will verify the assumption. Lewistown, Aff ontaua. Summer Birds of the Papago Indian Reservation and of the Santa Rita Mountains, Arizona BY HARRY S. SVARTH OUTH of Tucson, Arizona, along the banks of the Santa Cruz River, lies a region offering the greatest inducements to the ornithologist. The river, running underground for most of its course, rises to the surface at this point, and the bottom lands on either side are covered, miles in extent, with a thick growth of giant mesquite trees, literally giants, for a person accustomed to the scrubby bush that grows everywhere in the desert regions of the southwest, can hardly believe that these fine trees, many of them sixty feet high and over, really belong to the same species. This magnificent grove is included in the Papago Indian reservation, which is the only reason for the trees surviving as long as they have, since elsewhere every mesquite large enough to be used as firewood has been ruthlessly cut down, to grow up again as a straggly bush. Twice. at about the same season of the year, it has been my good fortune to spend a short time studying the birds of this region. The first time was in i9o2 , when Mr. O. W. Howard and I spent a week, from May I7 to 23, in the mesquites; while my second visit to the place was in ?9o3, when Mr. F. Stephens and I ex- plored it pretty thoroughly during the first two weeks in June. Leaving Tucson on the afternoon of June 3, we had ourselves and outfit driven to a spot about at the edge of the big mesquite forest, some ten miles from town, and less than a mile from the old San Xavier Mission. But little could be done that day beside getting some order in camp, and the first thing the next morning we went to call on Mr. Berger, the Indian agent, to whom we explained our aims and objects. He at once gave us permission to camp as long as we de- sired, and to make ourselves at home in every way; with the added request, how- ever, that we refrain trom shooting around the fields where the Indians were get- ting in hay. It seemed that some sportsmen (?) from town had on various occa- sions, in their reckless shooting, peppered the Indians with shot, a procedure to which Lo most unreasonably objected.