. The oist . mother and father are yet asleep—clad in corduroys and adenim shirt—a warm garb but service-able in the underbrush and on thesides of rough-barked oaks and scy-amores. At my heels trailed Schneider—a squat, little dog of no pedigree,but undoubted bravery and skill as asquirrel catcher—peace be to hisashes, he died a few months ago. Directly back of the house lay asloping stretch of natural springs ofcrude oil. The liquid from thesemingled with the dust and earth of thehillside until it had former a crustthrough which, at rare intervals, aclump of California laurel had car
. The oist . mother and father are yet asleep—clad in corduroys and adenim shirt—a warm garb but service-able in the underbrush and on thesides of rough-barked oaks and scy-amores. At my heels trailed Schneider—a squat, little dog of no pedigree,but undoubted bravery and skill as asquirrel catcher—peace be to hisashes, he died a few months ago. Directly back of the house lay asloping stretch of natural springs ofcrude oil. The liquid from thesemingled with the dust and earth of thehillside until it had former a crustthrough which, at rare intervals, aclump of California laurel had carpet of grass covered this bar-ren place, and over it at eventide thenighthawks flew by dozens. Often,in seasons previous, had I searchedfor their nests unsuccessfully, but thismorning, moving slowly through aclump of laurel, thinking of a certainsycamore flat toward which I washeaded, I almost steped on Mrs. Night-hawk covering her two eggs amidthe dead and fallen leaves of last year. 70 THE THE OOLOGIST. 71 She tried every wile she knew—broken wing and all—to draw me fromher home, but to no avail. The eggs were practically fresh andas like the eggs laid by the easternbird (chordeiles virginianus) as theycould possibly have been. This wasnot the first set of the Texan Night-hawk I had taken, but the others hadbeen found by watching some femalethat I had disturbed in a broad drywash near my home. On beyond, where the oil desertceased and the greenery of the hillsbegan, I came upon a nest of An-thonys Towhee, well hidden in aclump of sage brush. It was not morethan a foot from the ground to the nestand its four pale blue eggs, lightlylined and dotted with black. I haveseen some of these eggs which look-ed very much like the eggs of theSonoran Red-winged Blackbird, butthere was something distinctive aboutthis set—something typical which in-duced me to keep them in my collec-tion—where they are today. A pair of Vigors Wrens were flit-ting about in a tangl
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookidoist23al, booksubjectbirds
