Another large alfalfa field on the other side of town and beyond the deep gorge through which the river ran, was a most promising looking spot, containing as it did, an attractive laguna. But we were very positively informed that "no shooting allowed" was to be carried out to the letter of the signs displayed, and while the calaboose in the town was not a formidable looking place, we concluded it safest to give up our inclinations in that direction.
This part of the Mojave Desert is about 2700 feet above the sea, and, unlike the California portion of the Colorado Desert, where we had found the weather so moderate the previous winter, has a variable and somewhat wintry climate. Though rain in any quantity but seldom falls, the wind makes itself felt with a fierce energy that is truly exasperating. During our stay from December 21, 1904, to January 2, 1905, inclusive, we had two days with slight rain, many with heavy wind, some of them cloudy and exceedingly chilly, several nights of severe frost when water froze in the kitchen of our cottage, and only two days when warm sunshine and clear air gave us a taste of the sort of weather we would have most desired for comfort and collecting. Some days we would have to keep almost on the run, even in bright sunshine until as late as ten o'clock in the morning to keep warm, and then with hands too cold to handle guns or specimens properly. Doubtless our light clothing, and the fact that we had been long accustomed to the more equable California coast climate, rendered us particularly sensitive to this cold, which in the eastern states might have been deemed moderate for the season.
Some days we would find almost nothing in the bird line, though possibly picking up something unexpected on the way back to headquarters, while on others we would make a good haul. Whether this was due only to the weather, which did not always seem to be the case—as when a fine day would be barren of results—or whether the birds were moving up and down the river, if not actually migrating, we could not determine. But certainly our daily "horizons" were astonishingly uneven, and in such a way that the weather could hardly be called to account for the difference.
We had expected to find cactus wrens, sage thrashers, and the different desert sparrows at least fairly abundant in this locality, with the Texas woodpecker relatively numerous, to say nothing of visions of Leconte thrashers; but in all this we were more or less disappointed. Mesquites and the different forms of cactus were almost entirely wanting, the tree yuccas were widely scattered, while the sage and creosote bushes were lamentably thin. In consequence most of our work in the desert proper brought scant returns, rock wrens, a very few cactus wrens, some sage, and intermediate sparrows being almost the only inhabitants, though we were afforded an occasional tantalizing glimpse of a Leconte thrasher.
The cottonwoods along the river, on the other hand, abounded in heavy growths of mistletoe, the berries of which seemed extremely attractive to the majority of the visiting birds. Of these the western bluebird was most in evidence, sometimes widely dispersed in small groups feeding in the mistletoe clumps, and at other times collected in large flocks among the tops of the trees. The mountain bluebird was occasionally met with out in the open, but never in the woods. Some phainopeplas and a few Townsend soletaires seemed highly appreciative of the flavor of the mistletoe berries, while at intervals a flock of cedar-birds would be encountered eagerly devouring the transparent little fruit. The capture of a Bohemian waxwing by Pinger led us to hope that we would find more of these rare birds, but the hope was not verified and the specimen remained unique. Rocky Mountain creepers were now and then discovered busily engaged in their detective
