. Denizens of the desert; a book of southwestern mammals, birds, and reptiles, by Edmund C. Jaeger .. . as are characteristic birdsof the Lower Sonoran Life-Zone of all ourSouthwestern deserts. Some individuals, it istrue, occasionally stray outward to the coastduring the spring to nest in the sycamores andto eat the scarlet pepper berries, but the major-ity of them remain the year round in the mes-quite thickets and juniper mesas of the deserts. So close is the relation, on the ColoradoDesert, between the phainopeplas and themesquite tree that it may be safely stated thatthe distribution of t
. Denizens of the desert; a book of southwestern mammals, birds, and reptiles, by Edmund C. Jaeger .. . as are characteristic birdsof the Lower Sonoran Life-Zone of all ourSouthwestern deserts. Some individuals, it istrue, occasionally stray outward to the coastduring the spring to nest in the sycamores andto eat the scarlet pepper berries, but the major-ity of them remain the year round in the mes-quite thickets and juniper mesas of the deserts. So close is the relation, on the ColoradoDesert, between the phainopeplas and themesquite tree that it may be safely stated thatthe distribution of this bird there is coextensivewith that of the mesquites. Where there areno mesquites you will find no the branches of these trees grow the greatclumps of the mistletoe {Phoradendron cali-fornica) which bears those beautiful pink andpearly berries of which the phainopeplas are sofond. During parts of the year they seem tolive almost exclusively upon them. In the earlyspring the inconspicuous blossoms of the mistle-toe attract myriads of insects and on these thebirds gorge to i2 t O « < w w ^ o THE PHAINOPEPLA 175 It is the most natural thing that the phaino-peplas would choose as sites for their neststhese trees where they find so much of theirfood. Generally the bird-home is built on ahorizontal branch of a mesquite tree just un-der the mistletoe clump, where it will be wellscreened from the eye of gazers by the myriadsof down-hanging, blossoming stems. The rathersmall nest in many ways resembles that of thewood pewee. It is made entirely of fine mate-rials bound together with pieces of spider weband is lined with wool from tomentose plantsfound in the vicinity. The eggs are an ashy-blue color, thickly covered with bluish andblack spots, and generally number two to thenest: occasionally there are three. The ques-tion here arises: Why so few eggs? Reasoningby inference it may be said that it is probablybecause the phainopeplas have few naturalenemie
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectzoology, bookyear1922
