flew toward her,
leaving its mother behind.

I watched and waited, but the wren-tit did not give over her kind
offices, and the last I saw of the birds, on riding away, the three were
flying in procession across the brush, the lazuli following its mother
and the wren-tit bringing up the rear.

I went home very much puzzled. Was the wren-tit a lonely mother bird who
had lost her own little ones, or was she merely an old maid with a warm
spot in her heart for other peoples' little folks?

XVIII.

A RARE BIRD.

WE may say that we care naught for the world and its ways, but most of
us are more or less tricked by the high-sounding titles of the mighty.
Even plain-thinking observers come under the same curse of Adam, and,
like the snobs who turn scornfully from Mr. Jones to hang upon the words
of Lord Higginbottom, will pass by a plain _brown chippie_ to study with
enthusiasm the ways of a _phainopepla_! Sometimes, however, in
ornithology as in the world, a name does cover more than its letters,
and we are duped into making some interesting discoveries as well as
learning some of the important lessons in life. In the case of the
phainopepla, no hopes that could be raised by his cognomen would equal
the rare pleasure afforded by a study of his unusual ways.

[Illustration: THE PHAINOPEPLAS ON THE PEPPER-TREE]

On my first visit to Twin Oaks I caught but brief glimpses of this
distinguished bird. Sometimes for a moment he lit on a bare limb and I
had a chance to admire his high black crest and glossy blue-black coat,
which with one more touch of color would become iridescent. He was so
slenderly formed, and his shining coat was so smooth and trim, he
made me think of a bird of glass perched on a tree. But while I gazed at
him he would launch into the air and wing his way high over the valley
to the hillsides beyond, leaving me to marvel at the white disks on his
wings, hidden when perching, but in air making him suggest a black ship
with white sails.

His appearance was so elegant and his ways so unusual that I went back
East regretting I had not given more time to a bird who was so
individual, and resolved that if I ever returned to California my first
pleasure should be to study him. When the time finally came, an
ornithologist friend who knew my plans wrote, exclaiming, "Do study the
phainopeplas!" and added that she felt like making a journey to
California to see that one bird.

From the middle of March