till the middle of May I watched and waited for
the phainopeplas. There had been only a few of the birds before, and I
began to fear they had left the valley. When despairing of them,
suddenly one day I saw a black speck cross over to the hills. I wanted
to drop my work and follow, but went on with my rounds, and one bright
morning on my way home after a discouraging hunt for nests, a pair of
phainopeplas flew up right before my eyes almost within sight of the
house. I dropped down behind a bush, and in a moment more the birds flew
to a little oak by the road--a tree I had been sitting under that very
morning! The female seated herself on top of the oak, watching me with
raised crest, while her mate disappeared in a dark mat of leaves,
probably mistletoe, where he stayed so long that the possibility of a
nest waxed to a probability, and I made a rapid but ecstatic ascent to
the observer's seventh heaven. A phainopepla's nest right on my own
doorsill! I could hardly restrain my impatience, and was tempted to shoo
the birds away so I could go to the nest; when suddenly they opened
their wings and, crossing the valley, disappeared up a side canyon!
Pulling myself together and reflecting that I might have known better
than to imagine there would be a nest so near home, I took up my
camp-stool and trudged back to the house.

After that came a number of tantalizing hints. When watching the third
gnatcatcher's nest I had seen a pair of phainopeplas flying suggestively
back and forth from the brush to the various oaks, and thought the
handsome lover fed his mate as his relative the gentle high-bred waxwing
does. Surely the wooing of these beautiful birds should be carried on
with no less fine feeling, courtesy, and tenderness; and so it seems to
be. The black knight flew low over my head slowly, as if inspecting me,
and then came again with his lady, as if having said, "Dear one, I would
consult you upon this impending danger."

After that, something really delightful came about. Day by day, on
riding back to our ranch-house, I found phainopeplas there eating the
berries of the pepper-trees in our front yard. Before long the birds
began coming early in the morning; their voices were the first sounds we
heard on awakening and almost the last at night, and soon we realized
the delightful fact that our trees had become the feeding ground for all
the phainopeplas of the valley. Altogether there were five or six pairs.
It was a pre