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3 o THE CONDOR ]Vol. IV The Scissor-tailed Flycatcher in Texas. I?LORENCE MERRIAM BAILEY. N visiting the prairie country of of southern Texas, the scissor-tail was one of the first new birds that I noticed, and his forceful originality made him the last to seem common or uninteresting. If you see him first perched on the chaparral you are struck by his long white tail and glistening black, white, and salmon plumage. In perching the tail is closed thin and the black of the wings contrasts well with the bright salmon sides. He sits quietly like any every-day bird giving only an occasional bee-bird note till suddenly-- up he darts into the air, and with de lighted wonder you watch his odd figure and odder gyrations in the sky. One of his favorite performances is to fly up and, with rattling wings, execute an aerial seesaw, a line of sharp angled VVVVVVs, helping himself at the short turns by rapidly opening and. shutting his long white scissors. As he goes up and down he utters all the while a penetrating bee-bird scream ka-quee'--ka-quee'--ka-quee'--ka-quee' -- ka-quee', the emphasis being given each time at the top of the ascending line. Frequently when he is passing along with the even flight of a sober minded crow and you are quietly admiring the salmon lining of his wings, he will shoot rattling into the air and as you stare after him, drop back as suddenly as he rose. He does this apparently because the spirit moves him, as a boy slings a stone at the sky, but fervor is added by the appearance of a rival or an enemy, for he is much like a Tyran- nus in his masterful way of controlling his landscape. The head of a family we saw on the Nueces River one day was guarding his mate at the nest when another scissor-tail invaded his preserves. The angry guardian flew at him in fury, chasing him from the field with a loud noise of wings. At the first 'sound of combat the brooding bird's head ap- peared above the nest and hopping up on the rim she watched the chase with craned neck till the intruder with her lord and master close at his heels faded into white specks in the blue. Another day we saw a scissor tail in pursuit of an innocent caracara who was accidentally passing through the neighborhood. The slow ungainly earaeara was no match for the swift- winged flycatcher and with a dash Mil- vulus pounced down upon him and ac- tually rode the hawk till they were out of sight. The flycatcher's long feathery tail gives it such a light airy, not to say ethereal appearance that the heavy role of pugilist seems most unbecoming, but such a flying apparatus doubtless sug- gests much mischief. If a slow-winged Chondestes starts after an insect and by bustling along at its best can only just keep even, what more natural than that a swift-winged onlooker should sw?op down and with one beat of the wings pass over the head of his labor- ing neighbor and snap up the bug from under its bill? And what more natural than for him to give a chuckling twitter and a shake of his tail as he sails off leaving his erest-fallen brother to drop heavily to the ground? Such a shocking performance was witnessed dose to the court house--the hall of justice, alas!--in Uvalde; for the sensor- tails while as free as Texas rangers on the prairie, make themselves as much at home as mayors and aldermen in the towns. In San Antonio and Austin they are robe seen perching on tele- graph wires and fences as complacently as English sparrows. The powerful flight of Milvulus is useful not alone in social matters but in the small affairs of life. Mr. Bailey once saw one bathe on the wing in the deep water of the Coneho River. The bird swooped down, struck the surface of the water with his breast and glanced