Chapter VII: Introduction: To Some Species (4)

Breathlessly I watched the little bird. Its queer teetering is like that of some of the wrens, accentors, and water-thrushes. Now it ran to the top of a rock and stood dipping and eying me narrowly, flirting its bobby tail; now it flew to one of the steep, almost vertical walls of rock and scrambled up to a protuberance; then down again to the water; then, to my intense delight, it plunged into the limpid stream, and came up the next moment with a slug or water-beetle in its bill. Presently it flew over to the opposite wall, its feet slipping on the wet rocks, and darted into a small crevice just below the foot of the falls, gave a quick poke with its beak and flitted away--minus the tidbit it had held in its bill.

_RAINBOW FALLS_

_When the sun strikes the spray and mist at the proper angle, a beautiful rainbow is painted on the face of the falls. At the time of the author's visit to this idyllic spot a pair of water-ousels had chosen it for a summer residence. They flew from the rocks below to the top of the falls, hugging close to the rushing torrent. In returning, they darted in one swift plunge from the top to the bottom, alighting on the rocks below. With the utmost abandon they dived into the seething waters at the foot of the falls, usually emerging with a slug or beetle in their bills for the nestlings. Shod with tall rubber boots, the writer waded close up to the foot of the falls in search of the dipper's nest, which was set in a cleft of the rocks a few inches above the water, in the little shadowed cavern at the left of the stream. The pointed rock wrapped in mist, almost in the line of the plunging tide, was a favorite perch for the dippers._

Ah! my propitious stars shone on me that day with special favor. I had found not only the water-ousel itself, but also its nest. Suddenly water-ousel number two, the mate of number one, appeared on the scene, dipped, scanned me closely, flew to the slippery wall, darted to the cranny, and deposited its morsel, as its spouse had done. This time I heard the chirping of the youngsters. Before examining the nest I decided to watch the performances of the parent birds, which soon cast off all the restraint caused for a moment by my presence, taking me, no doubt, for the ordinary sightseer who overlooks them altogether.

Again and again the birds plunged into the churning flood at the foot of the falls, sometimes remaining under water what seemed a long while, and always coming to the surface with a delicacy for the nestlings. They were able to dip into the swift, white currents and wrestle with them without being washed away. Of course, the water would sometimes carry them down stream, but never more than a few inches, and never to a point where they could be injured. They were perfect masters of the situation. They simply slipped in and out like living chunks of cork. Their coats were waterproof, all they needed to do being to shake off the crystal drops now and then.

Their flight up the almost perpendicular face of the falls was one of graceful celerity. Up, up, they would mount only a few inches from the dashing current, and disappear upstream in search of food. In returning, they would sweep down over the precipitous falls with the swiftness of arrows, stopping themselves lightly with their outspread wings before reaching the rocks below. From a human point of view it was a frightful plunge; from the ousel point of view it was an every-day affair.

"_Up, up, only a few inches from the dashing current_"]

After watching the tussle between ousel and water for a long time, I decided to take a peep at their nursery. In order to do this I was compelled to wade into the stream a little below the falls, through mist and spray; yet such humid quarters were the natural habitat and playground of these interesting cinclids. And there the nest was, set in a cleft about a foot and a half above the water, its outer walls kept moist by the spray which constantly dashed against them from the falls. The water was also dripping from the rock that over-hung the nest and formed its roof. A damp, uncanny place for a bird's domicile, you would naturally suppose, but the little lovers of cascades knew what they were about. Only the exterior of the thick, moss-covered walls were moist. Within, the nest was dry and cosey. It was an oval structure, set in its rocky cleft like a small oven, with an opening at the front. And there in the doorway cuddled the two fledglings, looking out at the dripping walls and the watery tumult, but kept warm and comfortable. I could not resist touching them and caressing their little heads, considering it quite an ornithological triumph for one day to find a pair of water-ousels, discover a nest, and place my finger upon the crowns of the nestlings.

Scores of tourists visited the famous falls every day, some of them lingering long in the beautiful place, and yet the little ousels had gone on with their nest-building and brood-rearing, undisturbed by human spectators. I wondered whether many of the visitors noticed the birds, and whether any one but myself had discovered their nest. Indeed, their little ones were safe enough from human meddling, for one could not see the nest without wading up the stream into the sphere of the flying mists.

The natural home of _Cinclus mexicanus_ is the Rocky Mountains, to which he is restricted, not being known anywhere else on this continent. He is the only member of the dipper family in North America. There is one species in South America, and another in Europe. He loves the mountain stream, with its dashing rapids and cascades. Indeed, he will erect his oven-like cottage nowhere else, and it must be a fall and not a mere ripple or rapid. Then from this point as a centre--or, rather, the middle point of a wavering line--he forages up and down the babbling, meandering brook, feeding chiefly, if not wholly, on water insects. Strange to say, he never leaves the streams, never makes excursions to the country roundabout, never flies over a mountain ridge or divide to reach another valley, but simply pursues the winding streams with a fidelity that deserves praise for its very singleness of purpose. No "landlubber" he. It is said by one writer that the dipper has never been known to alight on a tree, preferring a rock or a piece of driftwood beside the babbling stream; yet he has the digits and claws of the passeres, among which he is placed systematically. He is indeed an anomaly, though a very engaging one. Should he wish to go to another canyon, he will simply follow the devious stream he is on to its junction with the stream of the other valley; then up the second defile. His flight is exceedingly swift. His song is a loud, clear, cheerful strain, the very quintessence of gladness as it mingles with the roar of the cataracts.

Farther up Ute Pass I found another nest, which was placed right back of a cascade, so that the birds had to dash through a curtain of spray to reach their cot. They also were feeding their young, and I could see them standing on a rock beneath the shelf, tilting their bodies and scanning me narrowly before diving into the cleft where the nest was hidden. This nest, being placed back of the falls, could not be reached.

In Bear Creek canyon I discovered another inaccessible nest, which was placed in a fissure at the very foot of the falls and only an inch or two above the agitated waters. There must have been a cavity running back into the rock, else the nest would have been kept in a soggy condition all the time.

Perhaps the most interesting dipper's nest I found was one at the celebrated Seven Falls in the south Cheyenne Canyon. On the face of the cliff by the side of the lowest fall there was a cleft, in which the nest was placed, looking like a large bunch of moss and grass. My glass brought the structure so near that I could plainly see three little heads protruding from the doorway. There were a dozen or more people about the falls at the time, who made no attempt at being quiet, and yet the parent birds flew fearlessly up to the nest with tidbits in their bills, and were greeted with loud, impatient cries from three hungry mouths, which were opened wide to receive the food. The total plunge of the stream over the Seven Falls is hundreds of feet, and yet the adult birds would toss themselves over the abyss with reckless abandon, stop themselves without apparent effort in front of their cleft, and thrust the gathered morsels into the little yellow-lined mouths. It was an aerial feat that made our heads dizzy. This pair of birds did not fly up the face of the falls in ascending to the top, as did those at Rainbow Falls, but clambered up the wall of the cliff close to the side of the roaring cataract, aiding themselves with both claws and wings. When gathering food below the falls, they would usually, in going or returning, fly in a graceful curve over the heads of their human visitors.

"_Three hungry mouths, which were opened wide to receive the food_"]

Although the dipper is not a web-footed bird, and is not classed by the naturalists among the aquatic fowl, but is, indeed, a genuine passerine, yet he can swim quite dexterously on the surface of the water. However, his greatest strength and skill are shown in swimming under water, where he propels himself with his wings, often to a considerable distance, either with or against the current. Sometimes he will allow the current to carry him a short distance down the stream, but he is always able to stop himself at a chosen point. "Ever and anon," says Mr. John Muir, in his attractive book on "The Mountains of California," "while searching for food in the rushing stream, he sidles out to where the too powerful current carries him off his feet; then he dexterously rises on the wing and goes gleaning again in shallower places." So it seems that our little acrobat is equal to every emergency that may arise in his adventurous life.

In winter, when the rushing mountain streams are flowing with the sludge of the half-melted snow, so that he cannot see the bottom, where most of his delicacies lie, he betakes himself to the quieter stretches of the rivers, or to the mill ponds or mountain lakes, where he finds clearer and smoother water, although a little deeper than he usually selects. Such weather does not find him at the end of his resources; no, indeed! Having betaken himself to a lake, he does not at once plunge into its depths after the manner of a duck, but finding a perch on a snag or a fallen pine, he sits there a moment, and then, flying out thirty or forty yards, "he alights with a dainty glint on the surface, swims about, looks down, finally makes up his mind, and disappears with a sharp stroke of his wings." So says Mr. John Muir, who continues: "After feeding for two or three minutes he suddenly reappears, showers the water from his wings with one vigorous shake, and rises abruptly into the air as if pushed up from beneath, comes back to his perch, sings a few minutes, and goes out to dive again; thus coming and going, singing and diving, at the same place for hours."

The depths to which the cinclid dives for the food on the bottom is often from fifteen to twenty feet. When he selects a river instead of a lake for his winter bathing, its waters, like those of the shallower streams, may also contain a large quantity of sludge, thus rendering them opaque even to the sharp little eyes of the dipper. Then what does he do? He has a very natural and cunning way of solving this problem; he simply seeks a deep portion of the river and dives through the turbid water to the clear water beneath, where he can plainly see the "goodies" on the bottom.

It must not be thought that this little bird is mute amid all the watery tumult of his mountain home, for he is a rare vocalist, his song mingling with the ripple and gurgle and roar of the streams that he haunts. Nor does he sing only in the springtime, but all the year round, on stormy days as well as fair. During Indian summer, when the streams are small, and silence broods over many a mountain solitude, the song of the ousel falls to its lowest ebb; but when winter comes and the streams are converted into rolling torrents, he resumes his vocal efforts, which reach their height in early summer. Thus it would seem that the bird's mood is the gayest when his favorite stream is dashing at its noisiest and most rapid pace down the steep mountain defiles. The clamor of the stream often drowns the song of the bird, the movement of his mandibles being seen when not a sound from his music-box can be heard. There must be a feeling of fellowship between the bird and the stream he loves so well.

You will not be surprised to learn that the dipper is an extremely hardy bird. No snowstorm, however violent, can discourage him, but in the midst of it all he sings his most cheerful lays, as if defying all the gods of the winds. While other birds, even the hardy nuthatches, often succumb to discouragement in cold weather, and move about with fluffed-up feathers, the very picture of dejection--not so the little dipper, who always preserves his cheerful temper, and is ready to say, in acts, if not in words: "Isn't this the jolliest weather you ever saw?" Away up in Alaska, where the glaciers hold perpetual sway, this bird has been seen in the month of November as glad and blithesome as were his comrades in the summery gorges of New Mexico.

PLAINS AND FOOTHILLS

LOUISIANA TANAGER--_Pyranga ludoviciana_ (Upper figure, male; lower, female)]

The foregoing chapters contain a recital of observations made in the neighborhood of Colorado Springs and in trips on the plains and among the mountains in that latitude. Two years later--that is, in 1901--the rambler's good angel again smiled upon him and made possible another tour among the Colorado mountains. This time he made Denver, instead of Colorado Springs, the centre of operations; nor did he go alone, his companion being an active boy of fourteen who has a penchant for Butterflies, while that of the writer, as need scarcely be said, is for the Birds--in our estimation, the two cardinal B's of the English language. Imagine two inveterate ramblers, then, with two such enchanting hobbies, set loose on the Colorado plains and in the mountains, with the prospect of a month of uninterrupted indulgence in their manias!

In the account of my first visit, most of the species met with were described in detail both as to their habits and personal appearance. In the present record no such minutiae will be necessary so far as the same species were observed, and therefore the chief objects of the following chapters will be, first, to note the diversities in the avian fauna of the two regions; second, to give special attention to such birds as either were not seen in my first visit or were for some cause partly overlooked; and, third, to trace the peculiar transitions in bird life in passing from the plains about Denver to the crest of Gray's Peak, including jaunts to several other localities.

In my rambles in the neighborhood of Denver only a few species not previously described were observed, and yet there were some noteworthy points of difference in the avi-fauna of the two latitudes, which are only about seventy-five miles apart. It will perhaps be remembered that, in the vicinity of Colorado Springs and Manitou, the pretty lazuli buntings were quite rare and exceedingly shy, only two or three individuals having been seen. The reverse was the case in the suburbs of Denver and on the irrigated plains between that city and the mountains, and also in the neighborhood of Boulder, where in all suitable haunts the lazulis were constantly at my elbow, lavish enough of their pert little melodies to satisfy the most exacting, and almost as familiar and approachable as the indigo-birds of the East. It is possible that, for the most part, the blue-coated beauties prefer a more northern latitude than Colorado Springs for the breeding season.

At the latter place I failed to find the burrowing owl, although there can be little doubt of his presence there, especially out on the plains. Not far from Denver one of these uncanny, sepulchral birds was seen, having been frightened from her tunnel as I came stalking near it. She flew over the brow of the hill in her smooth, silent way, and uttered no syllable of protest as I examined her domicile--or, rather, the outside of it. Scattered about the dark doorway were a number of bones, feathers, and the skin of a frog, telling the story of the _table d'hote_ set by this underground dweller before her nestlings. She might have put up the crossbones and skull as a sign at the entrance to her burrow, or even placed there the well-known Dantean legend, "All hope abandon, ye who enter here," neither of which would have been more suggestive than the telltale litter piled up before her door. When I chased her from her hiding-place, she flew down the hill and alighted on a fence-post in the neighborhood of her nest, uttering several screechy notes as I came near her again, as if she meant to say that I was carrying the joke a little too far in pursuing her about. Presently she circled away on oily wings, and I saw her no more.

So little enthusiasm does such a bird stir within me that I felt too lazy to follow her about on the arid plain. It may be interesting as a matter of scientific information to know that the burrowing owl breeds in a hole in the ground, and keeps company with the prairie dog and the rattlesnake, but a bird that lives in a gloomy, malodorous cave, whose manners are far from attractive, and whose voice sounds as strident as a buzz-saw--surely such a bird can cast no spell upon the observer who is interested in the aesthetic side of bird nature. A recent writer, in describing "A Buzzards' Banquet," asks a couple of pregnant questions: "Is there anything ugly out of doors? Can the ardent, sympathetic lover of nature ever find her unlovely?" To the present writer these questions present no Chinese puzzle. He simply brushes all speculation and theorizing aside by responding "Yes," to both interrogatories, on the principle that it is sometimes just as well to cut the Gordian knot as to waste precious time trying to untie it. The burrowing owl makes me think of a denizen of the other side of the river Styx, and why should one try to love that which nature has made unattractive, especially when one cannot help one's feeling?

In the preceding chronicles no mention, I believe, has been made of one little bird that deserves more than a mere _obiter dictum_. My first meeting with the blithesome house-finch of the West occurred in the city of Denver, in 1899. It could not properly be called a formal presentment, but was none the less welcome on that account. I had scarcely stepped out upon the busy street before my ear was accosted by a kind of half twitter and half song that was new to me. "Surely that is not the racket of the English sparrow; it is too musical," I remarked to a friend walking by my side.

Peering among the trees and houses, I presently focussed my field-glass upon a small, finch-like bird whose coat was striped with gray and brown, and whose face, crown, breast, and rump were beautifully tinged or washed with crimson, giving him quite a dressy appearance. What could this chipper little city chap be, with his trig form and well-bred manners, in such marked contrast with those of the swaggering English sparrow? Afterwards he was identified as the house-finch, which rejoices in the high-sounding Latin name of _Carpodacus mexicanus frontalis_. His distribution is restricted to the Rocky Mountain district chiefly south of the fortieth parallel of north latitude.

He is certainly an attractive species, and I wish we could offer sufficient inducements to bring him east. A bird like him is a boon and an ornament to the streets and parks of any city that he graces with his presence and enlivens with his songs. No selfish recluse is he; no, indeed! In no dark gulch or wilderness, far from human neighborhood, does he sulkily take up his abode, but prefers the companionship of man to the solitudes of nature, declaring in all his conduct that he likes to be where there are "folks." In this respect he bears likeness to the English sparrow; but let it be remembered that there the analogy stops. Even his chirruping is musical as he flies overhead, or makes his _caveat_ from a tree or a telegraph wire against your ill-bred espionage. He and his plainly clad little spouse build a neat cottage for their bairns about the houses, but do not clog the spouting and make themselves a nuisance otherwise, as is the habit of their English cousins.

This finch is a minstrel, not of the first class, still one that merits a high place among the minor songsters; and, withal, he is generous with his music. You might call him a kind of urban Arion, for there is real melody in his little score. As he is an early riser, his matin voluntaries often mingled with my half-waking dreams in the morning at dawn's peeping, and I loved to hear it too well to be angry for being aroused at an unseasonable hour. The song is quite a complicated performance at its best, considerably prolonged and varied, running up and down the chromatic scale with a swing and gallop, and delivered with great rapidity, as if the lyrist were in a hurry to have done, so that he could get at something else.

In my rambles he was found not only in the cities of the plains (Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo), but also in many of the mountain towns and villages visited, Leadville, over ten thousand feet skyward, being, I believe, one of the exceptions, while Silver Plume and Graymont were others. He does not fancy altitudes, I take it, much over eight thousand feet. In the villages of Red Cliff and Glenwood, both beyond the continental divide, he was the same sprightly citizen, making himself very much at home.

Much as this finch cherishes the society of man, he is quite wary and suspicious, and does not fancy being watched. As long as you go on your way without seeming to notice him, he also goes his way, coming into plain sight and chirping and singing; but just stop to watch him with your binocular, and see how quickly he will take alarm, dart away, and ensconce himself behind a clump of foliage, uttering a protest which seems to say, "Why doesn't that old fellow go about his own business?" If in some way the American house-finch could be persuaded to come east, and the English sparrow could be given papers of extradition, the exchange would be a relief and a benefit to the whole country.

Some idyllic days were spent in sauntering about Golden, which keeps guard at the entrance of Clear Creek Canyon, and has tucked itself in a beautiful valley among the foothills, which in turn stand sentinel over it. In the village itself and along the bush-fringed border of the creek below, as well as in the little park at its border, there were many birds, nearly all of which have been described in the previous chapters. However, several exceptions are worthy of note. A matted copse a mile and a half below the town afforded a hiding-place for three young or female redstarts, which were "playing butterfly," as usual, and chanting their vivacious little tunes. These and several near Boulder were the only redstarts seen in my Colorado wanderings, although Professor Cooke says they breed sparingly on the plains, and a little more commonly in the mountains to an altitude of eight thousand feet, while one observer saw a female in July at the timber-line, which is three thousand feet above the normal range of the species. Why did not this birdlet remain within the bounds set by the scientific guild? Suit for contempt of court should be brought against it. Redstarts must have been very scarce in the regions over which I rambled, else I certainly should have noticed birds that are so fearless and so lavish of song.

One day my companion and I clambered up the steep side of a mesa some distance below Golden--that is, the base of the mesa was below the village, while its top towered far above it. A mesa was a structural portion of Colorado topography that neither of the two ramblers had yet explored, and we were anxious to know something about its resources from a natural history point of view. It was hard climbing on account of the steepness of the acclivity, its rocky character, and the thick network of bushes and brambles in many places; but "excelsior" was our motto in all our mountaineering, and we allowed no surmountable difficulties to daunt us. What birds select such steep places for a habitat? Here lived in happy domesticity the lyrical green-tailed towhee, the bird of the liquid voice, the poet laureate of the steep, bushy mountain sides, just as the water-ousel is the poet of the cascades far down in the canyons and gulches; here also thrived the spurred towhees, one of which had tucked a nest beneath a bush cradling three speckled eggs. This was the second nest of this species I had found, albeit not the last. Here also dwelt the rock wren, a little bird that was new to me and that I had not found in the latitude of Colorado Springs either east or west of the continental divide. A description of this anchorite of the rocks will be given in a later chapter. I simply pause here to remark that he has a sort of "monarch-of-all-I-survey" air as he sits on a tall sandstone rock and blows the music from his Huon's horn on the messenger breezes. His wild melodies, often sounding like a blast from a bugle, are in perfect concord with the wild and rugged acclivities which he haunts, from which he can command many a prospect that pleases, whether he glances down into the valleys or up to the silver-capped mountain peaks. One cannot help feeling--at least, after one has left his rock-strewn dwelling-place--that a kind of glamour hangs about it and him.

The loud hurly-burly of the long-tailed chat reached us from a bushy hollow not far away. So far as I could determine, this fellow is as garrulous a churl and bully as his yellow-breasted cousin so well known in the East. (Afterwards I found the chats quite numerous at Boulder.) At length we scaled the cliffs, and presently stood on the edge of the mesa, which we found to be a somewhat rolling plateau, looking much like the plains themselves in general features, with here and there a hint of verdure, on which a herd of cattle were grazing. The pasture was the buffalo grass. Does the bird-lover ask what species dwell on a treeless mesa like this? It was the home of western grassfinches, western meadow-larks, turtle doves, desert horned larks, and a little bird that was new to me, evidently Brewer's sparrow. Its favorite resort was in the low bushes growing on the border of the mesa and along the edge of the cliff. Its song was unique, the opening syllable running low on the alto clef, while the closing notes constituted a very respectable soprano. A few extremely shy sparrows flitted about in the thickets of a hollow as we began our descent, and I have no doubt they were Lincoln's sparrows.

The valley and the irrigated plain were the birds' elysium. Here we first saw and heard that captivating bird, the lark bunting, as will be fully set forth in the closing chapter. This was one of the birds that had escaped me in my first visit to Colorado, save as I had caught tantalizing glimpses of him from the car-window on the plain beyond Denver, and when I went south to Colorado Springs, I utterly failed to find him. It has been a sort of riddle to me that not one could be discovered in that vicinity, while two years later these birds were abundant on the plains both east and west of Denver. If Colorado Springs is a little too far south for them in the summer, Denver is obviously just to their liking. No less abundant were the western meadow-larks, which flew and sang with a kind of lyrical intoxication over the green alfalfa fields.

One morning we decided to walk some distance up Clear Creek Canyon. At the opening of the canyon, Brewer's blackbirds were scuttling about in the bushes that broidered the steep banks of the tumultuous stream, and a short distance up in the gorge a lazuli bunting sat on a telegraph wire and piped his merry lay. Soon the canyon narrowed, grew dark and forbidding, and the steep walls rose high on both sides, compelling the railway to creep like a half-imprisoned serpent along the foot of the cliffs; then the birds disappeared, not caring to dwell in such dark, more than half-immured places. Occasionally a magpie could be seen sailing overhead at an immense height, crossing over from one hillside to the other, turning his head as he made the transit, to get a view of the two peripatetics in the gulch below, anxious to discover whether they were bent on brigandage of any kind.

At length we reached a point where the mountain side did not look so steep as elsewhere, and we decided to scale it. From the railway it looked like a short climb, even if a little difficult, and we began it with only a slight idea of the magnitude of our undertaking. The fact is, mountain climbing is a good deal more than pastime; it amounts to work, downright hard work. In the present instance, no sooner had we gained one height than another loomed steep and challenging above us, so that we climbed the mountain by a series of immense steps or terraces. At places the acclivity was so steep that we were compelled to scramble over the rocks on all fours, and were glad to stop frequently and draw breath and rest our tired limbs. My boy comrade, having fewer things than I to lure him by the way, and being, perhaps, a little more agile as well, went far on ahead of me, often standing on a dizzy pinnacle of rock, and waving his butterfly-net or his cap in the air, and shouting at the top of his voice to encourage his lagging parent and announce his triumph as a mountaineer.

However, the birdman can never forget his hobby. There were a few birds on that precipitous mountain side, and that lent it its chief attraction. At one place a spurred towhee flitted about in a bushy clump and called much like a catbird--an almost certain proof of a nest on the steep, rocky wall far up from the roaring torrent in the gorge below. On a stony ridge still farther up, a rock wren was ringing his peculiar score, which sounds so much like a challenge, while still farther up, in a cluster of stunted pines, a long-crested jay lilted about and called petulantly, until I came near, when he swung across the canyon, and I saw him no more.

After a couple of hours of hard climbing, we reached the summit, from which we were afforded a magnificent view of the foothills, the mesas, and the stretching plains below us, while above us to the west hills rose on hills until they culminated in mighty snow-capped peaks and ridges. It must not be supposed, because the snow-mantled summits in the west loomed far above our present station, that this mountain which we had ascended was a comparatively insignificant affair. The fact is, it was of huge bulk and great height measured from its base in the canyon; almost as much of a mountain, in itself considered, as Gray's Peak. It must be borne in mind that the snowy peaks were from thirty to forty miles away, and that there is a gradual ascent the entire distance to the upper valleys and gorges which creep about the bases of the loftiest peaks and ridges. A mountain rising from the foothills may be almost as bulky and high and precipitous as one of the alpine peaks covered with eternal snow. Its actual altitude above sea-level may be less by many thousand feet, while its height from the surrounding canyons and valleys may be almost, if not quite, as great. The alpine peaks have the advantage of majesty of situation, because the general level of the country from which they rise is very high. There we stood at a sort of outdoor halfway house between the plains and the towering ridges, and I can only say that the view was superb.

There were certain kinds of birds which had brought their household gods to the mountain's crest. Lewis's woodpeckers ambled about over the summit and rocky ridges, catching insects on the wing, as is their wont. Some distance below the summit a pair of them had a nest in a dead pine snag, from the orifice of which one was seen to issue. A mother hawk was feeding a couple of youngsters on the snarly branch of a dead pine. Almost on the summit a western nighthawk sprang up from my feet. On the bare ground, without the faintest sign of a nest, lay her two speckled eggs, which she had been brooding. She swept around above the summit in immense zigzag spirals while I examined her roofless dwelling-place. It was interesting to one bird-lover, at least, to know that the nighthawk breeds in such places. Like their eastern congeners, the western nighthawks are fond of "booming." At intervals a magpie would swing across the canyon, looking from side to side, the impersonation of cautious shyness. A few rods below the crest a couple of rock wrens were flitting about some large rocks, creeping in and out among the crevices like gray mice, and at length one of them slyly fed a well-fledged youngster. This proves that these birds, like many of their congeners, are partial to a commanding lookout for a nesting site. These were the only occupants of the mountain's brow at the time of our visit, although in one of the hollows below us the spurred and green-tailed towhees were rendering a selection from Haydn's "Creation," probably "The heavens are telling."

No water was to be found from the bottom of the canyon to the summit of the mountain; all was as dry as the plain itself. The feathered tenants of the dizzy height were doubtless compelled to fly down into the gorge for drinking and bathing purposes, and then wing up again to the summit--certainly no light task for such birds as the wrens and towhees.

Before daybreak one morning I made my way to a small park on the outskirts of the village to listen to the birds' matutinal concert. The earliest singers were the western robins, which began their carols at the first hint of the coming dawn; the next to break the silence were the western wood-pewees; then the summer warblers chimed in, followed by the western grassfinches, Bullock's orioles, meadow-larks, and lark sparrows, in the order named. Before daylight had fully come a family of mountain bluebirds were taking their breakfast at the border of the park, while their human relatives were still snoring in bed. The bluebirds are governed by old-fashioned rules even in this very "modern" age, among their maxims being,--

"Early to bed and early to rise,
Makes bluebirds healthy and wealthy and wise."

Just now I came across a pretty conceit of John B. Tabb, which more aptly sets off the mountain blue than it does his eastern relative, and which I cannot forbear quoting:

"When God made a host of them,
One little flower lacked a stem
To hold its blossom blue;
So into it He breathed a song,
And suddenly, with petals strong
As wings, away it flew."

And there is Eben E. Rexford, who almost loses himself in a tangle of metaphors in his efforts to express his admiration of this bird with the cerulean plumes. Hark to his rhapsody:

"Winged lute that we call a bluebird, you blend in a silver strain
The sound of the laughing waters, the patter of spring's sweet rain,
The voice of the winds, the sunshine, and fragrance of blossoming
things;
Ah! you are an April poem that God has dowered with wings."

On our return to the plains from a two weeks' trip to Georgetown and Gray's Peak, we spent several days at Arvada, a village about halfway between Denver and Golden. The place was rife with birds, all of which are described in other chapters of this volume.[10] Mention need be made here only of the song-sparrows, which were seen in a bushy place through which a purling stream wound its way. Of course, they were _Melospiza fasciata montana_, but their clear, bell-like trills were precise copies of those of the merry lowland minstrels of the East. Special attention is called to the fact that, in my first visit to Colorado, the only place in which mountain song-sparrows were met with was Buena Vista, quite a distance up among the mountains, while in the visit now being described they were not found anywhere in the mountains, save in the vale below Cassels. They were breeding at Arvada, for a female was seen carrying a worm in her bill, and I am sure a nest might easily have been found had I not been so busily occupied in the study of other and rarer species. However, the recollection of the merry lyrists with the speckled breasts and silvery voices, brings to mind Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton's "Myth of the Song-Sparrow," from which it will be seen that this attractive bird has had something of an adventurous career:

"His mother was the Brook, his sisters were the Reeds,
And they every one applauded when he sang about his deeds.
His vest was white, his mantle brown, as clear as they could be,
And his songs were fairly bubbling o'er with melody and glee.
But an envious Neighbor splashed with mud our Brownie's coat and vest,
And then a final handful threw that stuck upon his breast.
The Brook-bird's mother did her best to wash the stains away,
But there they stuck, and, as it seems, are very like to stay.
And so he wears the splashes and the mud blotch, as you see;
But his songs are bubbling over still with melody and glee."

_Song Sparrow_]

[10] I find I have overlooked the western Maryland yellow-throat,
which was seen here; also near Colorado Springs, and in several
other bushy spots, only on the plains. It seldom ascends into the
mountains, never far. Its song and habits are similar to those of
its eastern congener.

RAMBLES ABOUT GEORGETOWN

At nine o'clock on the morning of June 22, the two ramblers boarded a Colorado and Southern train, and bowled up Clear Creek Canyon to Georgetown. Having been studying winged creatures on the plains and among the foothills, mesas, and lower mountains, we now proposed to go up among the mountains that were mountains in good earnest, and see what we could find.

The village of Georgetown nestles in a deep pocket of the mountains. The valley is quite narrow, and on three sides, save where the two branches of Clear Creek have hewn out their canyons, the ridges rise at a sharp angle to a towering height, while here and there a white-cap peeps out through the depressions. Those parts of the narrow vale that are irrigated by the creek and its numerous tiny tributaries are beautiful in their garb of green, while the areas that are not thus refreshed are as gray as the arid portions of the plains themselves. And that is the case everywhere among the Rockies--where no water flows over the surface the porous, sandy soil is dry and parched. The altitude of Georgetown is eight thousand four hundred and seventy-six feet. We were therefore three thousand feet higher than we had been in the morning, and had a right to expect a somewhat different avi-fauna, an expectation in which we were not disappointed.

Our initial ramble took us down the valley. The first bird noted was a familiar one--the warbling vireo, which is very abundant in Colorado in its favorite localities, where all day you may be lulled by its "silvery converse, just begun and never ended." No description of a bird so well known in both the East and the West is required, but the one seen that day gave a new performance, which seems to be worthy of more than a passing notice. Have other bird students observed it? The bird was first seen flitting about in the trees bordering the street; then it flew to its little pendent nest in the twigs. I turned my glass upon it, and, behold, there it sat in its tiny hammock singing its mercurial tune at the top of its voice. It continued its solo during the few minutes I stopped to watch it, glancing over the rim of its nest at its auditor with a pert gleam in its twinkling eyes. That was the first and only time I have ever seen a bird indulging its lyrical whim while it sat on its nest. Whether the bird was a male or a female I could not determine, but, whatever its sex, its little bosom was bubbling over with music.[11]

[11] After the foregoing was written, I chanced upon the following
note in "Bird Lore" for September and October, 1901, written by a
lady at Moline, Illinois, who had made an early morning visit to the
haunt of a warbling vireo: "Seated on the ground, in a convenient
place for watching the vireo, which was on the nest, we were soon
attracted by a vireo's song. Search for the singer failed to find
it, until we noted that the bird on the nest seemed to be singing.
Then, as we watched, over and over again the bird was seen to lift
up its head and pour out the long, rich warble--a most delicious
sight and sound. Are such ways usual among birds, or did we chance
to see and hear an unusual thing?"

It was soon evident that the western robins were abundant about Georgetown, as they were on the plains and among the foothills. They were principally engaged just now in feeding their young, which had already left their nests. Presently I shall have more to say about these birds. Just now I was aware of some little strangers darting about in the air, uttering a fine, querulous note, and at length descending to the ground to feast daintily on the seeds of a low plant. Here I could see them plainly with my glass, for they gave me gracious permission to go quite near them. Their backs were striped, the predominant color being brown or dark gray, while the whitish under parts were streaked with dusk, and there were yellow decorations on the wings and tails, whether the birds were at rest or in flight. When the wings were spread and in motion, the golden ornamentation gave them a filmy appearance. On the wing, the birds, as I afterwards observed, often chirped a little lay that bore a close resemblance in certain parts to the "pe-chick-o-pe" of the American goldfinch. Indeed, a number of their notes suggested that bird, as did also their manner of flight, which was quite undulatory. The birds were the pine siskins. They are very common in the Rockies, ranging from an elevation of eight thousand feet to the timber-line. This pert and dainty little bird is the same wherever found in North America, having no need of the cognomen "western" prefixed to his name when he takes it into his wise little head to make his abode in the Rocky Mountains.

_CLEAR CREEK VALLEY_

_A scene near Georgetown. The copses in the valley are the home of white-crowned sparrows, willow thrushes, Lincoln's sparrows and Wilson's warblers; the steep, bushy acclivities are selected by the spurred and green-tailed towhees, Audubon's and Macgillivray's warblers; while the western robins, pine siskins, and broad-tailed humming-birds range all over the region. The robins and siskins make some of their most thrilling plunges over such cliffs as are shown in the picture._

The reader will perhaps recall that a flock of pine siskins were seen, two years prior, in a patch of pine scrub a short distance below Leadville, at which time I was uncertain as to their identity. Oddly enough, that was the only time I saw these birds in my first trip to Colorado, but here in the Georgetown region, only seventy-five or a hundred miles farther north, no species were more plentiful than they.

The siskins try to sing--I say "try" advisedly. It is one of the oddest bits of bird vocalization you ever heard, a wheezy little tune in the ascending scale--a kind of crescendo--which sounds as if it were produced by inhalation rather than exhalation. It is as labored as the alto strain of the clay-colored sparrow of the Kansas and Nebraska prairies, although it runs somewhat higher on the staff. The siskins seen at Georgetown moved about in good-sized flocks, feeding awhile on weed-seeds on the sunny slopes, and then wheeling with a merry chirp up to the pine-clad sides of the mountains. As they were still in the gregarious frame at Georgetown, I concluded that they had not yet begun to mate and build their nests in that locality. Afterwards I paid not a little attention to them farther up in the mountains, and saw several feeding their young, but, as their nests are built high in the pines, they are very difficult to find, or, if found, to examine. Our birdlets have superb powers of flight, and actually seem to revel in hurling themselves down a precipice or across a chasm with a recklessness that makes the observer's blood run cold. Sometimes they will dart out in the air from a steep mountain side, sing a ditty much like the goldfinch's, then circle back to their native pines on the dizzy cliff.

I must be getting back to my first ramble below Georgetown. Lured by the lyrics of the green-tailed towhee, I climbed the western acclivity a few hundred feet, but found that few birds choose such dry and eerie places for a habitat. Indeed, this was generally my experience in rambling among the mountains; the farther up the arid steeps, the fewer the birds. If you will follow a mountain brook up a sunny slope or open valley, you will be likely to find many birds; but wander away from the water courses, and you will look for them, oftentimes, in vain. The green-tailed towhees, spurred towhees, Audubon's warblers, and mountain hermit thrushes are all partial to acclivities, even very steep ones, but they do not select those that are too remote from the babbling brook to which they may conveniently resort for drinking and bathing.

A green and bushy spot a half mile below the village was the home of a number of white-crowned sparrows. None of them were seen on the plains or in the foothills; they had already migrated from the lower altitudes, and had sought their summer residences in the upper mountain valleys, where they may be found in great abundance from an elevation of eight thousand feet to copsy haunts here and there far above the timber-line hard by the fields of snow.

The white-crowns in the Georgetown valley seemed to be excessively shy, and their singing was a little too reserved to be thoroughly enjoyable, for which reason I am disposed to think that mating and nesting had not yet begun, or I should have found evidences of it, as their grassy cots on the ground and in the bushes are readily discovered. Other birds that were seen in this afternoon's ramble were Wilson's and Audubon's warblers, the spotted sandpiper, and that past-master in the art of whining, the killdeer. Another warbler's trill was heard in the thicket, but I was unable to identify the singer that evening, for he kept himself conscientiously hidden in the tanglewood. A few days later it turned out to be one of the most beautiful feathered midgets of the Rockies, Macgillivray's warbler, which was seen in a number of places, usually on bushy slopes. He and his mate often set up a great to-do by chirping and flitting about, and I spent hours in trying to find their nests, but with no other result than to wear out my patience and rubber boots. I can recall no other Colorado bird, either large or small, except the mountain jay, that made so much ado about nothing, so far as I could discover. But I love them still, on account of the beauty of their plumage and the gentle rhythm of their trills.

The next morning, chilly as the weather was--and it was cold enough to make one shiver even in bed--the western robins opened the day's concert with a splendid voluntary, waking me out of my slumbers and forcing me out of doors for an early walk. No one but a systematic ornithologist would be able to mark the difference between the eastern and western types of robins, for their manners, habits, and minstrelsy are alike, and their markings, too, so far as ordinary observation goes. The carolling of the two varieties is similar, so far as I could discern--the same cherry ringing melody, their voices having a like propensity to break into falsetto, becoming a veritable squeak, especially early in the season before their throat-harps are well tuned. With his powerful muscles and wide stretch of wing the robin is admirably adapted to the life of a mountaineer. You find him from the plains to the timber-line, sometimes even in the deepest canyons and on the most precipitous mountain sides, always the same busy, noisy, cheery body. One day I saw a robin dart like a meteor from the top of a high ridge over the cliffs to the valley below, where he alighted on a cultivated field almost as lightly as a flake of snow. He--probably she (what a trouble these pronouns are, anyway!)--gathered a mouthful of worms for his nestlings, then dashed up to the top of the ridge again, which he did, not by flying out into the air, but by keeping close up to the steep, cliffy wall, striking a rock here and twig there with his agile feet to help him in rising. The swiftness of the robin's movements about the gorges, abysses, and precipices of the mountains often inspires awe in the beholder's breast, and, on reflection, stirs him with envy. Many nests were found in the Georgetown valley, in woodsy and bushy places on the route to Gray's Peak as far as the timber-line, in the neighborhood of Boulder, in the Platte River Canyon, in South Park, and in the Blue River region beyond the Divide. Some of the nests contained eggs, others young in various stages of plumage, and still others were already deserted. For general ubiquity as a species, commend me to the American robin, whether of the eastern or western type. Wherever found he is a singer, and it is only to be regretted that--

"All will not hear thy sweet, out-pouring joy
That with morn's stillness blends the voice of song,
For over-anxious cares their souls employ,
That else, upon thy music borne along
And the light wings of heart-ascending prayer,
Had learned that Heaven is pleased thy simple joys to share."

"_Out-pouring joy_"]