pie plumed his feathers unrebuked in their oak, making the place
seem more deserted than before. A lizard ran out from the grape cuttings
at my feet, and a little black and white mephitis cantered along over
the ground with his back arched and his head down. He nosed around under
the bushes, showing the white V on his back, exactly like that of our
eastern species. As I rode home, five turkey buzzards were flying low
over the edge of the island, and one vulture rose from a meal of one of
the little black and white animal's relatives, but I saw nothing more of
my birds that day.

The next day the phainopeplas came again to the pepper-trees and ate
their fill while I sat on the steps watching. The male was quite
unconcerned, but when his mate flew near me, he called out sharply; he
could risk his own life, but not that of his love. Again the pair flew
back to the high oaks on the far side of the island. All my hopes of the
first low inaccessible nest vanished. I had driven the birds away. My
intrusiveness had made me lose the best chance of the whole nesting
season. But I would try to follow them. It did not seem necessary to
take Billy. There were only a few trees on that side of the island, and
it would be a simple matter to locate the birds. I would walk over, find
in which tree they were building, and spend the morning with them. I
went. Each oak was encircled by a thick wall of brush, over which it was
almost impossible to see more than a fraction of the tree, and the high
oak tops were impenetrable to eye and glass. After chasing phantoms all
the afternoon I went home with renewed respect for Billy as an adjunct
to field work. In order to locate anything in chaparral, one must be
high enough to overlook the mass.

That afternoon I saw a pair of phainopeplas fly up a canyon on the east,
and another pair fly up another on the west. If I were to know anything
of these birds, I must not be balked by faulty observing; I must at
least do intelligent work. Riding in from the back and tying Billy out
of sight away from the old nest, I swung myself up into a crotch of a
low oak from which I could overlook the whole island. The phainopeplas
soon flew in, but to the opposite side, and I was condemning myself for
having driven them away when, to my amazement, the male flew over and
shot down into the little oak where he had been building before! My
self-reproach took a different form--I had not been patient enough.
Surely if I