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Sun up; the yellow-throated meadowlarks lilting and tossing their liquid gold notes straight to heaven; the desert flowers such a mass of gorgeous, voluptuous bloom as dazzle the eye cactus, blood-red and gold and carmine, wild pink, scarlet poppy, desert geranium, little shy, dwarf, miniature English daisies over which Tennyson's "Maud" trod gorgeous desert flowers voluptuous as oriental women who said our Southwest was an arid waste?
I had recognized my first tanager from afar, ten days before, his voice and theme were so like his Northern relative's; but this time I was too hasty. My listless singer was not the nonpareil, nor even a finch of any kind, but a yellow-throated warbler. For a month I had seen birds of his species almost daily, but always in hard wood trees, and silent.
Laughing Gull, 1; Bonaparte's Gull, 1; Brown Pelican, 9; Lesser Scaup, 75; Ward's Heron, 2; Little Blue Heron, 5; Killdeer, 15; Mourning Dove, 3; Turkey Vulture, 10; Black Vulture, 4; Marsh Hawk, 1; Bald Eagle, 1; Kingfisher, 1; Red-headed Woodpecker, 1; Florida Blue Jay, 5; Towhee, 1; Tree Sparrow, 14; Loggerhead Shrike, 6; Myrtle Warbler, 20; Yellow-throated Warbler, 1; Palm Warbler, 60; Prairie Warbler, 1; Mockingbird, 12; House Wren, 2; Ruby-crowned Kinglet, 2; Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, 3.
In fact, it was ended in several families; mocking-birds were about ready to fly, young chipping sparrows peeped from every tuft of grass, baby bluebirds were trying their wings at their doors, the yellow-throated warbler was stuffing her youngsters on the next tree, and the late kingbirds had nearly finished their nests.
The beautiful Elaine covered the shield of Sir Launcelot with a case of silk, upon which devices were braided by her fair hands, and added, from her own design, "A border fantasy of branch and flower, And yellow-throated nestling in the nest." When he went to the tourney she gave him a red sleeve "broidered with great pearls," which he bound upon his helmet.
From under his horse's feet the prairie sod sent up sweet, earthy odors into his nostrils and the tinkle of the bells in the saddle-bunch behind him made music in his ears the sort of music a true cowboy loves. Yellow-throated meadow larks perched swaying in the top of gray sage bushes and sang to him that the world was good.
By exercising extreme caution, and approaching inch by inch, I have climbed a tree to the nest of a yellow-throated vireo, and at the first attempt handed the bird a meal-worm with my fingers. At one time I had two house wrens, a yellow-throated vireo, a chipping sparrow and a flock of chickadees that would come to my hand."
He is the one Southern bird that I should perhaps be sorry to see common in Massachusetts; but that "perhaps" is a large word. Many yellow-throated warblers, silent as yet, were commonly in the live-oaks, and innumerable myrtle birds, also silent, with prairie warblers, black-and-white creepers, solitary vireos, an occasional chickadee, and many more.
The rare rough-winged swallow deigns to linger and nest in the Park as well as do his more common brethren. The dainty pensile nests which become visible when the leaves fall in the autumn are swung by four species of vireos, the white-eyed, red-eyed, warbling, and yellow-throated.
The vireos are a little larger than the warblers, and are far less brilliant and variegated in color. There are five species found in most of our woods, namely the red-eyed vireo, the white-eyed vireo, the warbling vireo, the yellow-throated vireo, and the solitary vireo, the red-eyed and warbling being most abundant, and the white-eyed being the most lively and animated songster.
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