arral. The flora was Mexican, strange thorny bushes being interspersed with brilliant flower masses. The fences were made by pitchforks with cactus pads, the pads laid along a line on the ground rooting and branching till they grow to high impenetrable fence walls that in their season become beautiful with large yellow tuni flowers. When spring comes on the prairies of Texas, even the fences burst into bloom.
It seems a world of flowers and birds, for as you go south you meet hordes of nocturnal migrants that have stopped to rest and feed by the way. Such a cosmopolitan assembly of birds! Resident southerners jostling wings with passing northerners on their way from their southern wintering grounds to their northern breeding grounds. On the prairie near Corpus Christi there were among others both the northern and southern Vultures, and such southerners as Harris Hawks, Desert Sparrows, Road-runners, Scissor-tailed Fly-catchers, Jackdaws, Pyrrhuloxias, Mockingbirds, and Caraearas side by side with such northerners as Dickcissels, Lincoln Sparrows, Lark Buntings, White-crowned and White-throated Sparrows, Upland Plover, and Warblers. Swifts, Swallows, Nighthawks, Cowbirds, Hummingbirds, Gnatcatchers, Marsh Hawks, Kingbirds, and other Flycatchers, Bob-whites, Wrens, Shrikes, Orchard Orioles, and Vireos added to the confusion. In the absence of high trees the bushes and thickets seemed crowded. Not every seat was taken, to be sure, but you were impressed by the numbers of birds and surprised by the incongruous assemblies that confronted you in the bushes. Mourning Doves seemed to be everywhere in the brush, many of them apparently passing the time while their mates brooded. Lark Sparrows were in squads singing in the bushes or feeding on the ground, their white tail crescents flashing out as they flew, Grasshopper Sparrows were chirring everywhere, and Mockingbirds were singing and scolding and going about their daily matters. Once a whirl of birds passed, explained by a handsome white-rumped Harris Hawk. Now and then a brilliant Cardinal appeared on top of the chaparral and sang.
But the song that dominated part of the brushy prairie was a new one to my ear and became the song of songs to me, for it is to the southern prairie what the rare song of the Pine-woods Sparrow is to the moss draped pines of Florida, and the chant of the Hermit Thrush to the pointed firs of the northern mountains. The Cassin Sparrow! Even now, long years after, the name of that plain little brown bird comes with bated breath. How it recalls the first time it was heard! It was on an ordinary sunny Texas morning that I walked out into ordinary chaparral prairie in an every day mood, all ignorant of the existence of Peucaea cassini, when lo! from the brown bushes in front of me up sprang a little winged creature, a 'blithe spirit', an embodiment of the deepest joy of life, and with head raised and wings outspread, from a well spring undefiled poured out a song that held both the gladness of the blooming prairies and all the joy and hope of his mate on the nest.
While such intimate pleasures were to be experienced among the birds of the neighboring prairie, interesting hints of the surrounding water bird life, both resident and migrant, were obtained at Tule Lake to the northwest and also along the shore line adjoining Corpus Christi.
Tule Lake was alive with Grebes, Shovellers, Plovers, Sandpipers, and Terns, and a party of tall pinkish Avocets were wading out across the small waves, putting their long up-curved bills down delicately before them; while Stilts, all black above, all white below, stilted up on long pink legs, were going
