in the lone valley, which was already beginning to look shadowy and a
little uncanny, the tall ridges that leaped up at the right obscuring
the light of the declining sun. My purpose had been to find
accommodations at a mountaineer's cabin far down the valley, in the
neighborhood of the Seven Lakes; but I had tarried too long on the
mountain, absorbed in watching the birds, and the danger now was that,
if I ventured farther down the hollow, I should lose my way and be
compelled to spend the night alone in this deserted place. I am neither
very brave nor very cowardly; but, in any case, such a prospect was not
pleasing to contemplate. Besides, I was by no means sure of being able
to secure lodgings at the mountaineer's shanty, even if I should be able
to find it in the dark. There seemed to be only one thing to do--to
climb back to the signal station on the summit.
I turned about and began the ascent. How much steeper the acclivities
were than they had seemed to be when I came down! My limbs ached before
I had gone many rods, and my breath came short. Upward I toiled, and by
the time my trail reached the cog-road I was ready to drop from
exhaustion. Yet I had not gone more than a third of the way to the top.
I had had no supper, but was too weary even to crave food, my only
desire being to find some place wherein to rest. Night had now come, but
fortunately the moon shone brightly from a sky that was almost clear,
and I had no difficulty in following the road.
Wearily I began to climb up the steep cog-wheel track. Having trudged
around one curve, I came to a portion of the road that stretched
straight up before me for what seemed an almost interminable distance,
and, oh! the way looked so steep, almost as if it would tumble back upon
my head. Could I ever drag myself up to the next bend in the track? By
a prodigious effort I did this at last--it seemed "at last" to me, at
all events--and, lo! there gleamed before me another long stretch of
four steel rails.
My breath came shorter and shorter, until I was compelled to open my
mouth widely and gasp the cold, rarefied air, which, it seemed, would
not fill my chest with the needed oxygen. Sharp pains shot through my
lungs, especially in the extremities far down in the chest; my head and
eye-balls ached, and it seemed sometimes as if they would burst; my
limbs trembled with weakness, and I tottered and reeled like a drunken
man from side to side of the road, having to watch carefully lest I
might topple over the edge and meet with a serious accident. Still that
relentless track, with its quartette of steel rails, stretched steep
before me in the distance.
For the last half mile or more I was compelled to fling myself down upon
the track every few rods to rest and recover breath. Up, up, the road
climbed, until at length I reached the point where it ceases to swing
around the shoulders of the mountain, and ascends directly to the
summit. Here was the steepest climb of all. By throwing my weary frame
on the track at frequent intervals and resting for five minutes, taking
deep draughts of air between my parched lips, I at last came in sight of
the government building. It is neither a mansion nor a palace, not even
a cottage, but never before was I so glad to get a glimpse of a building
erected by human hands. It was past nine o'clock when I staggered up to
the door and rang the night bell, having spent more than three hours and
a half in climbing about two miles and a half. Too weary to sleep, I
tossed for hours on my bed. At last, however, "nature's sweet restorer"
came to my relief, and I slept the deep sleep of unconsciousness until
seven o'clock the next morning, allowing the sun to rise upon the Peak
without getting up to greet him. That omission may have been an
unpardonable sin, for one of the chief fads of visitors is to see the
sun rise from the Peak; but I must say in my defence that, in the first
place, I failed to wake up in time to witness the Day King's advent,
and, in a second place, being on bird lore intent rather than scenic
wonders, my principal need was to recruit my strength for the tramping
to be done during the day. The sequel proved that, for my special
purpose, I had chosen the wiser course.
By eight o'clock I had written a letter home, eaten a refreshing
breakfast, paying a dollar for it, and another for lodging, and was
starting down the mountain, surprised at the exhilaration I felt, in
view of my extreme exhaustion of the evening before. I naturally
expected to feel stiff and sore in every joint, languid and woe-be-gone;
but such was not the case. It is wonderful how soon one recovers
strength among these heights. How bracing is the cool mountain air, if
you breathe it deeply! As I began the descent, I whistled and
sang,--that is, I tried to. To be frank, it was all noise and no music,
but I must have some way of giving expression to the uplifted emotions
that filled my breast. Again and again I said to myself, "I'm so glad!
I'm so glad! I'm so glad!" It was gladness pure and simple,--the
dictionary has no other word to express it. No pen can do justice to the
panorama of mountain and valley and plain as viewed from such a height
on a clear, crisp morning of June. One felt like exclaiming with George
Herbert:
"Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky!"
So far as the aesthetic value of it went, I was monarch of all I
surveyed, even though mile on mile of grandeur and glory was spread out
before me. The quatrain of Lowell recurred to my mind:
"'Tis heaven alone that is given away,
'Tis only God may be had for the asking;
No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by poorest comer."
Before leaving the Peak, I watched a flock of birds eating from the
waste-heap at the Summit House. They were the brown-capped rosy finches,
called scientifically _Leucosticte australis_. Their plumage was a rich
chocolate, suffused over neck, breast, and back with intense crimson,
while the pileum was quite black. With one exception--the white-tailed
ptarmigan--they range the highest in summer of all Colorado birds. They
are never seen below timber-line in that season, and are not known to
breed below twelve thousand feet; thence to the tops of the highest
peaks they hatch and rear their young. In August old and young swarm
over the summits picking edible insects from the snow, while in winter
they descend to timber-line, where most of them remain to brave the
arctic weather and its frequent storms.
Bidding a regretful good-by to the summit, for it held me as by a
magician's spell, I hastened down the steep incline of the cog-wheel
road, past Windy Point, and turning to the right, descended across the
green slope below the boulder region to the open, sunlit valley which I
had visited on the previous afternoon. It was an idyllic place, a
veritable paradise for birds. Such a chorus as greeted me from the
throats of I know not how many white-crowned sparrows,--several dozen,
perhaps,--it would have done the heart of any lover of avian minstrelsy
good to listen to. The whole valley seemed to be transfigured by their
roundelays, which have about them such an air of poetry and old-world
romance. During the morning I was so fortunate as to find a nest, the
first of this species that I had ever discovered. Providence had never
before cast my lot with these birds in their breeding haunts. The nest
was a pretty structure placed on the ground, beneath a bush amid the
green grass, its holdings consisting of four dainty, pale-blue eggs,
speckled with brown. The female leaped from her seat as I passed near,
and in that act divulged her little family secret. Although she chirped
uneasily as I bent over her treasures, she had all her solicitude for
nothing; the last thing I would think of doing would be to mar her
maternal prospects. As has been said, in this valley these handsome
sparrows were quite plentiful; but when, toward evening, I clambered
over a ridge, and descended into the valley of Moraine Lake, several
hundred feet lower than the Seven Lakes valley, what was my surprise to
find not a white-crown there! The next day I trudged up to the Seven
Lakes, and found the white-crowns quite abundant in the copses, as they
had been farther up the hollow on the previous day; and, besides, in a
boggy place about two miles below Moraine Lake there were several pairs,
and I was fortunate enough to find a nest. Strange--was it not?--that
these birds should avoid the copsy swamps near Moraine Lake, and yet
select for breeding homes the valleys both above and below it. Perhaps
the valley of Moraine Lake is a little too secluded and shut in by the
towering mountains on three sides, the other places being more open and
sunshiny.
The upper valley was the summer home of that musician _par excellence_
of the Rockies, the green-tailed towhee, and he sang most divinely,
pouring out his
"full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."
Having elsewhere described his minstrelsy and habits with more or less
fulness, I need give him only this passing reference here. A little bird
with which I here first made acquaintance was an elegant species known
as Audubon's warbler, which may be regarded as the western
representative of the myrtle warbler of the East. The two birds are
almost counterparts. Indeed, at first I mistook the Audubon for the
myrtle. The former has a yellow throat, while the latter's throat is
white.
In all the upper mountain valleys, and on the steep slopes of the
western as well as the eastern side of the Divide, I had the Audubon
warblers often at my elbow. In summer they make their homes at an
altitude of seven to eleven thousand feet, and are partial to pine
timber; indeed, I think I never found them elsewhere, save occasionally
among the quaking asps. I learned to distinguish Audubon's chanson from
those of his fellow-minstrels. It is not much of a song--a rather weak
little trill, with a kind of drawl in the vocalization that forms its
diagnostic feature. The persistency with which it is repeated on the
solitary pine-clad mountain sides constitutes its principal charm.
The winter haunts of Audubon's warblers are farther south than Colorado,
mostly in Mexico and Guatemala, although a few of them remain in the
sheltered mountain valleys of the western part of the United States.
Early in May they appear on the plains of eastern Colorado, where they
are known only as migrants. Here a double movement presently takes
place--what might be called a longitudinal and a vertical migration--one
division of the warbler army sweeping north to their breeding grounds in
Canada, and the other wheeling westward and ascending to the alpine
heights among the mountains, where they find the subartic conditions
that are congenial to their natures without travelling so great a
distance. Here they build their nests in the pine or spruce trees, rear
their families, and as autumn approaches, descend to the plains, tarry
there a week or two, then hie to their winter homes in the South.
One of the most gorgeous tenants of this valley was Wilson's warbler.[3]
It wears a dainty little cap that is jet black, bordered in front and
below with golden yellow, while the upper parts are rich olive and the
lower parts bright yellow. These warblers were quite abundant, and were
evidently partial to the thickets covering the boggy portions of the
vale. While Audubon's warblers kept themselves for the most part among
the pines on the slopes and acclivities, the little black-caps preferred
the lower ground. Their songs were not brilliant performances, though
rather pleasing, being short, jerky trills, somewhat lower in the scale
than those of the well-known summer warbler.
[3] Mr. Aiken says, "The Rocky Mountain representative of Wilson's
warbler is an intermediate form, nearest the Pacific coast bird
which is distinguished as the pileolated warbler."
While I was stalking about in the low, boggy part of the hollow, my
attention was attracted by an odd little song that came rolling down
from the pines on the mountain side. At length, time was found to go to
the place whence the song came. What could the gay little minstrel be?
Somewhere I had heard such minstrelsy--but where? There were runs in it
that bore some resemblance to certain strains of the Carolina wren's
vigorous lays, but this songster's voice was of a finer quality and had
less volume than that of the Carolina. The little bird was found
flitting among the pines, and continued to sing his gay little ballad
with as much vigor as before. Indeed, my presence seemed to inspire him
to redouble his efforts and to sing with more snap and challenge. He
acted somewhat like a wren, but was smaller than any species of that
family with which I was acquainted, and no part of his plumage was
barred with brown and white.
Now the midget in feathers leaped up the alternating branches of a pine,
and now he flew down and fluttered amid the chaos of dead logs and
boughs on the ground, all the while rolling his ditty from his limber
tongue. Beginning with an exceedingly fine whistle, which could not
be heard far away, he descanted in sounds that it is impossible to
convey in syllables. The best literation of his song that I was
able to make was the following: "Tse-e-ek, tse-e-ek, tse-e-e-ek,
cholly-cholly-cholly, che-che-che, pur-tie, pur-tie, pur-tie!" the
_pur-tie_ accented strongly on the second syllable and the whole
performance closing with an interrogative inflection.
For a long time I watched the little acrobat, but could not settle his
identity. Some hours later, while stalking along the other side of the
valley, I heard the song duplicated; this time the singer elevated his
crest feathers, and at once I recognized him; he was the ruby-crowned
kinglet, of course, of course! It was a shame not to identify him at
first sight. In Ohio I had often heard his song during the migrating
season, and now remembered it well; but never dreaming that the
ruby-crown would be found in these alpine districts, I was completely
thrown off my reckoning on hearing his quaint melodies.
[Illustration: _Ruby-Crowned Kinglet_
"_The singer elevated his crest feathers_"]
The ruby-crowned kinglet migrates to these heights in the spring and
rears his brood at an elevation of from nine thousand feet to the
timber-line, building a nest far up in a pine tree; whereas his eastern
kindred hie to the northern part of the United States and beyond, to
find summer homes and suitable breeding grounds. Within their chosen
boundaries the rubies are very plentiful in the Rockies, their quaint
rondeaus tumbling down from every pine-clad acclivity. In October they
descend to the plains, and in the latter part of the month hurry off to
a more southerly clime.
The birds were most abundant in the upper part of the valley, keeping
close to the precipitous heights of the Peak. It was a long walk down to
the mountaineer's cabin, and I had reason to be glad for not having
undertaken to find it the evening before, as I should certainly have
lost my way in the darkness. No one was at home now, but through the
screen door I could see a canary in a cage. Not a very inviting place to
spend the night, I reflected, and I crossed the valley, climbed a steep
ridge, following a slightly used wagon road, and trudged down the other
side into what I afterwards found was the valley of Moraine Lake, one of
the crystal sheets of water that are seen from the summit of Pike's Peak
sparkling in the sunshine. While climbing the ridge, I saw my first
mountain chickadee, capering about in the trees. He called like the
familiar black-cap, and his behavior was much like that bird's. As will
be seen in another chapter, I afterwards heard the mountain chickadee's
song on the western side of the range, and found it to be quite unlike
the minor strain of our pleasant black-cap of the East.
On the mountain side forming the descent to Moraine Lake a flock of
Clark's nutcrackers were flying about in the pine woods, giving
expression to their feelings in a great variety of calls, some of them
quite strident. A little junco came in sight by the side of the trail,
and hopped about on the ground, and I was surprised to note a reddish
patch ornamenting the centre of his back. Afterwards I learned that it
was the gray-headed junco, which is distinctly a western species,
breeding among the mountains of Colorado. Thrashing about among some
dead boles, and making a great to-do, were a pair of small woodpeckers,
which closely resembled the well-known downies of our eastern
longitudes. I suppose them to have been their western representatives,
which are known, according to Mr. Aiken and Professor Cooke, as
Batchelder's woodpecker. Near the same place I saw a second pair of
mountain bluebirds, flitting about somewhat nervously, and uttering a
gentle sigh at intervals; but as evening was now rapidly approaching, I
felt the need of finding lodging for the night, and could not stop to
hunt for their nest.
Faring down the mountain side to the lake, I circled around its lower
end until I came to the cottage of the family who have the care of the
reservoirs that supply the three towns at the foot of the mountains
with water fresh from the snow-fields. Here, to my intense relief, I was
able to secure lodging and board as long as I desired to remain.
I enjoyed the generous hospitality offered me for two nights and
considerably more than one day. It was a genuine retreat, right at the
foot of a tall mountain, embowered in a grove of quaking asps. Several
persons from Colorado Springs, one of them a professor of the college,
were spending their outing at the cottage, and a delightful fellowship
we had, discussing birds, literature, and mountain climbing.
After resting awhile, I strolled up the valley to listen to the vesper
concert of the birds, and a rich one it was. The western robins were
piping their blithesome "Cheerilies," Audubon's warblers were trilling
in the pines, and, most of all--but here I had one of the most
gratifying finds in all my mountain quest. It will perhaps be remembered
that the white-crowned sparrows, so plentiful in the upper valley, were
not to be seen in the valley of Moraine Lake. Still there were
compensations in this cloistered dip among the towering mountains; the
mountain hermit thrushes--sometimes called Audubon's thrushes--found the
sequestered valley precisely to their liking, and on the evening in
question I saw them and heard their pensive cadences for the first time.
Such exquisite tones, which seemed to take vocal possession of the vale
and the steep, pine-clad mountain side, it has seldom been my good
fortune to hear. Scores of the birds were singing simultaneously, some
of their voices pitched high in the scale and others quite low, as
though they were furnishing both the air and the contralto of the
chorus. It was my first opportunity to listen to the songs of any of the
several varieties of hermit thrushes, and I freely confess that I came,
a willing captive, under the spell of their minstrelsy, so sweet and sad
and far away, and yet so rich in vocal expression. In the latter part of
the run, which is all too brief, there is a strain which bears close
resemblance to the liquid melody of the eastern wood-thrush, but the
opening notes have a pathetic quality all their own. Perhaps Charles G.
D. Roberts can give some idea of one's feelings at a time like this:
"O hermit of evening! thine hour
Is the sacrament of desire,
When love hath a heavenlier flower,
And passion a holier fire."
A happy moment it was when a nest of this mountain hermit was
discovered, saddled on one of the lower limbs of a pine and containing
four eggs of a rich green color. These birds are partial to dense pine
forests on the steep, rocky mountain sides. They are extremely shy and
elusive, evidently believing that hermit thrushes ought to be heard and
not seen. A score or more may be singing at a stone's throw up an
acclivity, but if you clamber toward them they will simply remove
further up the mountain, making your effort to see and hear them at
close range unavailing. That evening, however, as the gloaming settled
upon the valley, one selected a perch on a dead branch some distance up
the hillside, and obligingly permitted me to obtain a fair view of him
with my glass. The hermits breed far up in the mountains, the greatest
altitude at which I found them being on the sides of Bald Mountain,
above Seven Lakes and a little below the timber-line. To this day their
sad refrains are ringing in my ears, bringing back the thought of many
half-mournful facts and incidents that haunt the memory.
A good night's rest in the cottage, close beneath the unceiled roof,
prepared the bird-lover for an all-day ramble. The matutinal concert was
early in full swing, the hermit thrushes, western robins, and Audubon's
warblers being the chief choralists. One gaudy Audubon's warbler visited
the quaking asp grove surrounding the cottage, and trilled the choicest
selections of his repertory. Farther up the valley several Wilson's
warblers were seen and heard. A shy little bird flitting about in the
tangle of grass and bushes in the swampy ground above the lake was a
conundrum to me for a long time, but I now know that it was Lincoln's
sparrow, which was later found in other ravines among the mountains. It
is an exceedingly wary bird, keeping itself hidden amid the bushy
clusters for the greater part of the time, now and then venturing to
peep out at the intruder, and then bolting quickly into a safe covert.
Occasionally it will hop out upon the top of a bush in plain sight, and
remain for a few moments, just long enough for you to fix its identity
and note the character of its pleasing trill. Some of these points were
settled afterwards and not on the morning of my first meeting with the
chary little songster.
My plan for the day was to retrace my steps of the previous afternoon,
by climbing over the ridge into the upper valley and visiting the famous
Seven Lakes, which I had missed the day before through a miscalculation
in my direction. Clark's crows and the mountain jays were abundant on
the acclivities. One of the latter dashed out of a pine bush with a
clatter that almost raised the echoes, but, look as I would, I could
find no nest or young or anything else that would account for the
racket.
The Seven Lakes are beautiful little sheets of transparent water,
embosomed among the mountains in a somewhat open valley where there is
plenty of sunshine. They are visible from the summit of Pike's Peak,
from which distant viewpoint they sparkle like sapphire gems in a
setting of green. As seen from the Peak they appear to be quite close
together, and the land about them seems perfectly level, but when you
visit the place itself, you learn that some of them are separated from
the others by ridges of considerable height. Beautiful and sequestered
as the spot is, I did not find as many birds as I expected. Not a duck
or water bird of any kind was seen. Perhaps there is too much hunting
about the lakes, and, besides, winged visitors here would have
absolutely no protection, for the banks are free of bushes of any
description, and no rushes or flags grow in the shallower parts. On the
ridges and mountain sides the kinglets and hermit thrushes were
abundant, a robin was carolling, a Batchelder woodpecker chirped and
pounded in his tumultuous way, Clark's crows and several magpies lilted
about, while below the lakes in the copses the white-crowned sparrows
and green-tailed towhees held lyrical carnival, their sway disputed only
by the natty Wilson's warblers.
It was a pleasure to be alive and well in such a place, where one
breathed invigoration at every draught of the fresh, untainted mountain
air; nor was it less a delight to sit on the bank of one of the
transparent lakes and eat my luncheon and quaff from a pellucid spring
that gushed as cold as ice and as sweet as nectar from the sand, while
the white-crowned sparrows trilled a serenade in the copses.
Toward evening I clambered down to the cottage by Moraine Lake. The next
morning, in addition to the birds already observed in the valley, I
listened to the theme-like recitative of a warbling vireo, and also
watched a sandpiper teetering about the edge of the water, while a
red-shafted flicker dashed across the lake to a pine tree on the
opposite side. As I left this attractive valley, the hermit thrushes
seemed to waft me a sad farewell.