Page:Condor5(3).djvu/13

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7 o THE CONDOR I Vol,. V a ranchman living in Ramsay Canyo a saw several, the first on May ?7, and noted that they were most common during the cherry season. On June 9, ?89?, my father and I accompanied Dr. A. K. Fisher to Garden Canyon seven miles south of the post. We reached the canyon and were riding up the narrow trail bordered with pines and live oaks, when suddenly a beautiful male trogon flew across the path just ahead of us, and perched on a live oak bush on the other side of the small stream which flows through the canyon. The Doc- tor tried to approach it, but the noise caused by his passage through the thick brush and over the sliding rocks on the hill side alarmed the bird, which from the first had seemed a trifle uneasy, and it was soon lost to view among the trees down the canyon. Higher up, among the pines, on the same day, we heard the calls of another which sounded much like those of a hen turkey. While we were eating lunch on the way down, we heard still another calling from the hill side above us, and the Doctor, who found it perched on the lower limb of a pine after a short search, watched its actions for a few moments and then shot it. It sat erect, the tail hanging straight down, and when uttering the call threw its head back until its beak peak pointed nearly straight up. On August x 4 of the same year I again found the trogon in Garden Canyon, this time higher up however at the Picture Rocks. A beautiful pair flew up from a fallen pine to the lower limb of a tree, and sat there quietly watching me. I dismounted and fired a reduced charge at the male, but the only effect was that he flew off through the trees unhurt, while the female flew up to a small tree on the hill, where she sat, looking at me until I loaded my gun, when I shot her. At the second shot the male flew up the canyon his beautiful carmine breast gleaming in the sunlight like a streak of flame. Both birds sat nearly erect when at rest, with their long tails hanging nearly straight down. Their flight was nearly like the slow flight of a magpie, until started, when they flew like a dove and nearly as fast. In ?892 , Dr. E. A. Mearns, U.S. A., shot an adult female in the San Luis mountains, in southwestern New Mexico. Its tail was much abraded as if the bird had spent a long time in very limited quarters and the breast feathers of the bird I shot were also much worn and soiled. These signs go far to show that both birds had nested recently, and there is no doubt that sometime in the near future a nest of this bird will be found within our borders. M?XICAN BLACK HAWK. During my stay in Arizona, I was not fortunate enough to find the nest of the black hawk (?frubitin?a anthracina) and in fact, saw but few of them. Near Fort Huachuca there was a pair which bred in ?89?. I never saw both at one time, but feel very certain that there were two, by the behavior of the individual I did see. Nearly every day, for a month or more, this large, odd-looking hawk, was seen soaring high over the foot hills back of the post, or hunting diligently in the canyons and gulches above the reservoir. The near- est view I had of him, was one day when I saw him out hunting; h..e was coming toward me and I concealed myself quickly behind a tree, and just before he came in range he made a swoop, capturing a green-tailed towhee, which was at once carried to the top of an oak stump, where the hawk proceeded to tear the feathers out. In February, x894, while hunting antelope on the plains below Fort Bowie, I put one up out of some brush, about two hundred yards in advance, and thinking I might find some cause for his being there, I started toward the place. I had not gone far when another arose, and then another and another, until four went sail-