Lingering in Golden Sunlight

Lingering in golden sunlight, on the shade-patched floor of broad, evergreen oaklands mantling gentle slopes of the Santa Ritas, I found another unique oasis of the desert. Peopling this encinal wood, whose dwarfish groves descended from foothill strongholds to make savanna-like contact with the arid grassland, was a most elfin community of birdfolk. Down the first oak-clad ravine sifted a band of tiny bush-tits. They were definitely preoccupied with midgel business. For an intruder they had scarcely more than a bright peek, and a sharp twitter that was half carried away with them as they hustled on to the next clump of silk-tassel and scraggly mesquite beside the dry wash. Here a pair of diminutive western gnatcatchers flipped vivaciously through the thorny scrub. As often, they flitted into low branches of the pigmy acorn-bearers, and whipped about in unending excitement amid the shiny, varnished leaves.

Their long gnatcatcher tails twitched like animated exclamation marks, white-trimmed outer feathers flashing at all angles. In a hidden vale of the low range, sunbeams glowed effulgently in leafy crowns, and shot long aureate shafts among gnarled limbs of the live oaks. Here I caught the talkative approach of those famous feathered midgets of the evergreen oak belt, the bridled titmice. Their acrobatic troop, in company of other sharp-eyed mites, the tufted gray titmice, came swinging and romping through the treetops. Suddenly I seemed to be at the center of a sportive band of these little crested woodsmen. They quickly infiltrated the arching boughs overhead. Several bridled titmice, tufted crowns and striking black-and-white facial markings giving them a puckish air, leaned far down from this vantage to peer with undisguised curiosity. A querulous note, apparently a remark upon the absurdity of this unfeathered visitor, passed between them.

Then, with unmistakable chickadee inflections in their friendly parting conversation, they drifted more quietly into a neighboring nut pine. Two cinnamon-brown Abert towhees came noisily to shuffle fallen leaves, as they shifted and searched the dry floor-cover of the woods. A dull-blue, graybacked Woodhouse jay, gliding down the slope, authoritatively squawked disapproval in his passing inspection of the grove. Small, olive-gray Stephen's vireo sings his strange, mewing notes in these Upper Sonoran aisles, although just now I did not hear him. Late afternoon sun lengthened scattered, lazy shadows. Still the dwarfish forest was wrapped in pleasant warmth, and one's thoughts in dreams. This idyllic summer hour seemed prophetic of autumn; then rollicking pygmy nuthatches, Mexican creepers, and soft-voiced warblers would descend from higher, pine-clad ranges to revel with the merry flocks of elfish titmice and lead-colored bush-tits. Sometimes, hundreds together, they frolic in the hospitable liveoak lands of the Santa Ritas.