This page needs to be proofread.

Mar., 1912 A WEEK AFIELD IN SOUTHERN ARIZONA 5' ladder to the next giant I examined the holes in the arms first and found three young Gilded Flickers (Uolaptes chrysoides) in one of them. One after anvther they left the nest and flew away, getting gradually closer to the ground and finally alighting thereon at a distance of a hundred yards or more. One tried to alight on the back of our auto seat but it was too slippery and he fell to the ground. They seemed remarkably strong on the wing for their first flight. The next sahuaro held a family of young Mexican Screech Owls (Otus asio ci?eraceus). There were three of them, all well feathered but with considerable down still clinging to them. One parent was in another hole in the stone cactus. A set of Ash-throated Flycatchers was found in the san?e cactus. It was in a hole in an arm and consisted of four eggs with incubation well advanced. The nest was a vile mess of mixed furs, full of vermin, which I unceremoniously dumped. Other giants yielded two more sets of Elf Owl, three each, and several nests of young Giltled Flickers. One nest of four young Gila Woodpeckers was found and several young of this species were seen flying about. We spent the whole Fig. 15. CLUMPS OF CHOLLA CACTUS; THE FAVORITE NESTING SITE OF PALMER AND BENDIRE THRASHERS day in this fashion, skirting along the edge of the mesquite forest for a distance of some six miles. That night we camped close to where ;ve took the first owl's nest, intending to go into the forest the next day. Starting at the break of the morning of the 24th we stopped for water at a Mexican ranch an:l found on inquiry that we would have to run back as far as Dos Reales, an Indian village close to San Xavier Mission. The name of this village, translated into the English language, means "Two Bits," or twenty-five cents. It hardly see?ned worth that sum. The mesquite forest is on an Indian reservation. which accounts for the fact that it is not all cut off yet. The mesquite trees are wonders of their kind. There were some whose trunks, at the base, scaled over four feet in diameter. The large bases branched a few feet from the ground into several limbs fifteen or eighteen inches in dimneter. The tallest reached a height of over sixty feet. The under- growth is a thick mass of hackb?rry, etc., with various thorny bushes growing close to the ground. Meandering wood roads lead in every direction and one can