the Halfway House. It was a saunter that shall never be forgotten, for I
gathered a half day's tribute of lore from the birds. A narrow green
hollow, wedging itself into one of the gorges of the towering Peak, and
watered by a snow-fed mountain brook, proved a very paradise for birds.
Here was that queer little midget of the Rockies, the broad-tailed
humming-bird, which performs such wonderful feats of balancing in the
air; the red-shafted flicker; the western robin, singing precisely like
his eastern half-brother; a pair of house-wrens guarding their
treasures; Lincoln's sparrows, not quite so shy as those at Moraine
Lake; mountain chickadees; olive-sided flycatchers; on the pine-clad
mountain sides the lyrical hermit thrushes; and finally those
ballad-singers of the mountain vales, the white-crowned sparrows, one of
whose nests I was so fortunate as to come upon. It was placed in a small
pine bush, and was just in process of construction. One of the birds
flew fiercely at a mischievous chipmunk, and drove him away, as if he
knew him for an arrant nest-robber.
Leaving this enchanting spot, I trudged down the mountain valleys and
ravines, holding silent converse everywhere with the birds, and at
length reached a small park, green and bushy, a short distance above the
Halfway House. While jogging along, my eye caught sight of a gray-headed
junco, which flitted from a clump of bushes bordering the stream to a
spot on the ground close to some shrubs. The act appeared so suggestive
that I decided to reconnoitre. I walked cautiously to the spot where the
bird had dropped down, and in a moment she flew up with a scolding
chipper. There was the nest, set on the ground in the grass and cosily
hidden beneath the over-arching branches of a low bush. Had the mother
bird been wise and courageous enough to retain her place, her secret
would not have been betrayed, the nest was so well concealed.
The pretty couch contained four juvenile juncos covered only with down,
and yet, in spite of their extreme youth, their foreheads and lores
showed black, and their backs a distinctly reddish tint, so early in
life were they adopting the pattern worn by their parents. The
persistency of species in the floral and faunal realms presents some
hard nuts for the evolutionist to crack. But that is an excursus, and
would lead us too far afield. This was the first junco's nest I had ever
found, and no one can blame me for feeling gratified with the
discovery. The gray-headed juncos were very abundant in the Rockies, and
are the only species at present known to breed in the State of Colorado.
They are differentiated from the common slate-colored snowbird by their
ash-gray suits, modestly decorated with a rust-colored patch on the
back.
It was now far past noon, and beginning to feel weak with hunger, I
reluctantly said adieu to the junco and her brood, and hurried on to the
Halfway House, where a luncheon of sandwiches, pie and coffee
strengthened me for the remainder of my tramp down the mountain to
Manitou. That was a walk which lingers like a Greek legend in my memory
on account of--well, that is the story that remains to be told.
On a former visit to the Halfway House I was mentally knocked off my
feet by several glimpses of a woodpecker which was entirely new to me,
and of whose existence I was not even aware until this gorgeous
gentleman hove in sight. He was the handsomest member of the _Picidae_
family I have ever seen--his upper parts glossy black, some portions
showing a bluish iridescence; his belly rich sulphur yellow, a bright
red median stripe on the throat, set in the midst of the black, looking
like a small necktie; two white stripes running along the side of the
head, and a large white patch covering the middle and greater
wing-coverts. Altogether, an odd livery for a woodpecker. Silently he
swung from bole to bole for a few minutes, and then disappeared.
Not until I reached my room in Manitou could I fix the bird's place in
the avicular system. By consulting Coues's _Key_ and Professor Cooke's
brochure on the _Birds of Colorado_, I found this quaintly costumed
woodpecker to be Williamson's sapsucker (_Sphyrapicus thyroideus_),
known only in the western part of the United States from the Rocky
Mountains to the Pacific coast. I now lingered in the beautiful pine
grove surrounding the Halfway House, hoping to see him again, but he did
not appear, and I reluctantly started down the cog-wheel track.
As I was turning a bend in the road, I caught sight of a mountain
chickadee flitting to a dead snag on the slope at the right, the next
moment slipping into a small hole leading inside. I climbed up to the
shelf, a small level nook among the tall pines on the mountain side, to
inspect her retreat, for it was the first nest of this interesting
species that I found. The chickadee flashed in and out of the orifice,
carrying food to her little ones, surreptitiously executing her
housewifely duties. The mountain tit seems to be a shy and quiet little
body when compared with the common black-cap known in the East.
While watching this bird from my place of concealment, I became
conscious of the half-suppressed chirping of a woodpecker, and, to my
intense joy, a moment later a Williamson's sapsucker swung to a pine
bole a little below me and began pecking leisurely and with assumed
nonchalance for grubs in the fissures of the bark. From my hiding-place
behind some bushes I kept my eye on the handsome creature. An artist
might well covet the privilege of painting this elegant bird as he
scales the wall of a pine tree. Presently he glided to a snag not more
than a rod from the chickadee's domicile, and then I noticed that the
dead bole was perforated by a number of woodpecker holes, into one of
which the sapsucker presently slipped with the tidbit he held in his
bill. The doorway was almost too small for him, obliging him to turn
slightly sidewise and make some effort to effect an entrance. Fortune
had treated me as one of her favorites: I had discovered the nest of
Williamson's sapsucker.
But still another surprise was in store. A low, dubious chirping was
heard, and then the female ambled leisurely to the snag and hitched up
to the orifice. She made several efforts to enter, but could not while
her spouse was within. Presently he wormed himself out, whereupon she
went in, and remained for some time. At length I crept to the snag and
beat against it with my cane. She was loath to leave the nest, but after
a little while decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
When she came out, my presence so near her nursery caused her not a
little agitation, which she displayed by flinging about from bole to
bole and uttering a nervous chirp.
As to costume, the male and the female had little in common. Her back
was picturesquely mottled and barred with black and white, her head
light brown, her breast decorated with a large black patch, and her
other under parts yellow. Had the couple not been seen together flitting
about the nest, they would not have been regarded as mates, so
differently were they habited.
Standing before the doorway of the nursery--it was not quite so high as
my head--I could plainly hear the chirping of the youngsters within.
Much as I coveted the sight of a brood of this rare species, I could not
bring myself to break down the walls of their cottage and thus expose
them to the claws and beaks of their foes. Even scientific curiosity
must be restrained by considerations of mercy.
The liege lord of the family had now disappeared. Desirous of seeing him
once more, I hid myself in a bush-clump near at hand and awaited his
return. Presently he came ambling along and scrambled into the orifice,
turning his body sidewise, as he had done before. I made my way quietly
to the snag and tapped upon it with my cane, but he did not come out, as
I expected him to do. Then I struck the snag more vigorously. No result.
Then I whacked the bole directly in the rear of the nest, while I stood
close at one side watching the doorway. The bird came to the orifice,
peeped out, then, seeing me, quickly drew back, determined not to desert
his brood in what he must have regarded as an emergency. In spite of all
my pounding and coaxing and feigned scolding--and I kept up the racket
for several minutes--I did not succeed in driving the _pater familias_
from his post of duty. Once he apparently made a slight effort to
escape, but evidently stuck fast in the entrance, and so dropped back
and would not leave, only springing up to the door and peeping out at me
when my appeals became especially vigorous. It appeared like a genuine
case of "I'm determined to defend my children, or die in the attempt!"
Meanwhile the mother bird was flitting about in an agitated way,
uttering piteous cries of remonstrance and entreaty. Did that bandit
intend to rob her of both her husband and her children? It was useless,
if not wanton, to hector the poor creatures any longer, even to study
their behavior under trying circumstances; and I left them in peace, and
hurried down to my lodgings in Manitou, satisfied with the results of my
day's ramble.
BIRDS OF THE ARID PLAIN
[Illustration: PLATE III
LAZULI BUNTING--_Cyanospiza amoena_
(Upper figure, male; lower, female)]
Having explored the summit of Pike's Peak and part of its southern slope
down to the timber-line, and spent several delightful days in the upper
valleys of the mountains, as well as in exploring several canyons, the
rambler was desirous of knowing what species of birds reside on the
plain stretching eastward from the bases of the towering ranges. One
afternoon in the latter part of June, I found myself in a straggling
village about forty miles east of Colorado Springs.
On looking around, I was discouraged, and almost wished I had not come;
for all about me extended the parched and treeless plain, with only here
and there a spot that had a cast of verdure, and even that was of a dull
and sickly hue. Far off to the northeast rose a range of low hills
sparsely covered with scraggy pines, but they were at least ten miles
away, perhaps twenty, and had almost as arid an aspect as that of the
plains themselves. Only one small cluster of deciduous trees was
visible, about a mile up a shallow valley or "draw." Surely this was a
most unpromising field for bird study. If I had only been content to
remain among the mountains, where, even though the climbing was
difficult, there were brawling brooks, shady woodlands, and green, copsy
vales in which many feathered friends had lurked!
[Illustration: _Desert Horned Larks_
"_They were plentiful in this parched region_"]
But wherever the bird-lover chances to be, his mania leads him to look
for his favorites, and he is seldom disappointed; rather, he is often
delightfully surprised. People were able to make a livelihood here, as
was proved by the presence of the village and a few scattering dwellings
on the plain; then why not the birds, which are as thrifty and wise in
many ways as their human relatives? In a short time my baggage was
stowed in a safe place, and, field-glass in hand, I sallied forth for my
first jaunt on a Colorado plain. But, hold! what were these active
little birds, hopping about on the street and sipping from the pool by
the village well? They were the desert horned larks, so called because
they select the dry plains of the West as their dwelling place. They are
interesting birds. The fewer trees and the less humidity, provided
there is a spot not too far away at which they may quench their thirst
and rinse their feathers, the better they seem to be pleased. They were
plentiful in this parched region, running or flying cheerfully before me
wherever my steps were bent. I could not help wondering how many
thousands of them--and millions, perhaps--had taken up free homesteads
on the seemingly limitless plains of eastern Colorado.
Most of the young had already left the nest, and were flying about in
the company of their elders, learning the fine art of making a living
for themselves and evading the many dangers to which bird flesh is heir.
The youngsters could readily be distinguished from their seniors by the
absence of distinct black markings on throat, chest, and forehead, and
the lighter cast of their entire plumage.
Sometimes these birds are called shore larks; but that is evidently a
misnomer, or at least a very inapt name, for they are not in the least
partial to the sea-shore or even the shores of lakes, but are more
disposed to take up their residence in inland and comparatively dry
regions. There are several varieties, all bearing a very close
resemblance, so close, indeed, that only an expert ornithologist can
distinguish them, even with the birds in hand. The common horned lark is
well known in the eastern part of the United States as a winter
resident, while in the middle West, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, etc.,
are to be found the prairie horned larks, which, as their name
indicates, choose the open prairie for their home. The desert horned
larks are tenants exclusively of the arid plains, mesas, and mountain
parks of the West. There is still another variety, called the pallid
horned lark, which spends the winter in Colorado, then hies himself
farther north in summer to rear his brood.
As I pursued my walk, one of these birds suddenly assumed an alert
attitude, then darted into the air, mounting up, up, up, in a series of
swift leaps, like "an embodied joy whose race has just begun." Up he
soared until he could no longer be seen with the naked eye, and even
through my field-glass he was a mere speck against the blue canopy, and
yet, high as he had gone, his ditty filtered down to me through the
still, rarefied atmosphere, like a sifting of fine sand. His descent was
a grand plunge, made with the swiftness of an Indian's arrow, his head
bent downward, his wings partly folded, and his tail perked upward at
precisely the proper angle to make a rudder, all the various organs so
finely adjusted as to convert him into a perfectly dirigible parachute.
Swift as his descent was, he alighted on the ground as lightly as a tuft
of down. It was the poetry of motion. One or two writers have insisted
that the horned lark's empyrean song compares favorably with that of
the European skylark; but, loyal and patriotic an American as we are,
honesty compels us to concede that our bird's voice is much feebler and
less musical than that of his celebrated relative across the sea. It
sounds like the unmelodious clicking of pebbles, while the song of the
skylark is loud, clear, and ringing.
Our birds of the plain find insects to their taste in the short grass
which carpets the land with greenish or olive gray. The following
morning a mother lark was seen gathering insects and holding them in her
bill--a sure sign of fledglings in the near neighborhood. I decided to
watch her, and, if possible, find her bantlings. It required not a
little patience, for she was wary and the sun poured down a flood of
almost blistering heat. This way and that she scurried over the ground,
now picking up an insect and adding it to the store already in her bill,
and now standing almost erect to eye me narrowly and with some
suspicion. At length she seemed to settle down for a moment upon a
particular spot, and when I looked again with my glass, her beak was
empty. I examined every inch of ground, as I thought, in the
neighborhood of the place where she had stopped, but could find neither
nest nor nestlings.
Again I turned my attention to the mother bird, which meanwhile had
gathered another bunch of insects and was hopping about with them
through the croppy grass, now and then adding to her accumulation until
her mouth was full. For a long time she zigzagged about, going by
provoking fits and starts. At length fortune favored me, for through my
levelled glass I suddenly caught sight of a small, grayish-looking ball
hopping and tumbling from a cactus clump toward the mother bird, who
jabbed the contents of her bill into a small, open mouth. I followed a
bee-line to the spot, and actually had to scan the ground sharply for a
few moments before I could distinguish the youngster from its
surroundings, for it had squatted flat, its gray and white plumage
harmonizing perfectly with the grayish desert grass.
[Illustration: _Lark_
"_It was a dear little thing_"]
It was a dear little thing, and did not try to escape, although I took
it up in my hand and stroked its downy back again and again. Sometimes
it closed its eyes as if it were sleepy. When I placed it on the ground,
it hopped away a few inches, and by accident punctured the fleshy corner
of its mouth with a sharp cactus thorn, and had to jerk itself loose,
bringing the blood from the lacerated part. Meanwhile the mother lark
went calmly about her household duties, merely keeping a watchful eye
on the human meddler, and making no outcry when she saw her infant in my
possession. I may have been _persona non grata_, but, if so, she did not
express her feeling. This was the youngest horned lark seen by me in my
rambles on the plains.
Perhaps the reader will care to know something about the winter habits
of these birds. They do not spend the season of cold and storm in the
mountains, not even those that breed there, for the snow is very deep
and the tempests especially fierce. Many of them, however, remain in the
foothills and on the mesas and plains, where they find plenty of seeds
and berries for their sustenance, unless the weather chances to be
unusually severe. One winter, not long ago, the snow continued to lie
much longer than usual, cutting off the natural food supply of the
larks. What regimen did they adopt in that exigency? They simply went to
town. Many of the kindly disposed citizens of Colorado Springs scattered
crumbs and millet seeds on the streets and lawns, and of this supply the
little visitors ate greedily, becoming quite tame. As soon, however, as
the snow disappeared they took their departure, not even stopping to say
thanks or adieu; although we may take it for granted that they felt
grateful for favors bestowed.
Besides the horned larks, many other birds were found on the plain. Next
in abundance were the western meadow-larks. Persons who live in the
East and are familiar with the songs of the common meadow-lark, should
hear the vocal performances of the westerners. The first time I heard
one of them, the minstrelsy was so strange to my ear, so different from
anything I had ever heard, I was thrown into an ecstasy of delight, and
could not imagine from what kind of bird larynx so quaint a medley could
emanate. The song opened with a loud, fine, piercing whistle, and ended
with an abrupt staccato gurgle much lower in the musical staff, sounding
precisely as if the soloist's performance had been suddenly choked off
by the rising of water in the windpipe. It was something after the order
of the purple martin's melodious sputter, only the tones were richer and
fuller and the music better defined, as became a genuine oscine. His
sudden and emphatic cessation seemed to indicate that he was in a
petulant mood, perhaps impatient with the intruder, or angry with a
rival songster.
Afterwards I heard him--or, rather, one of his brothers--sing arias so
surpassingly sweet that I voted him the master minstrel of the western
plains, prairies, and meadows. One evening as I was returning to
Colorado Springs from a long tramp through one of the canyons of the
mountains, a western meadow-lark sat on a small tree and sang six
different tunes within the space of a few minutes. Two of them were so
exquisite and unique that I involuntarily sprang to my feet with a cry
of delight. There he sat in the lengthening shadows of Cheyenne
Mountain, the champion phrase-fluter of the irrigated meadow in which he
and a number of his comrades had found a summer home.
On the plain, at the time of my visit, the meadow-larks were not quite
so tuneful, for here the seasons are somewhat earlier than in the
proximity of the mountains, and the time of courtship and incubation was
over. Still, they sang enough to prove themselves members of a gifted
musical family. Observers in the East will remember the sputtering call
of the eastern larks when they are alarmed or their suspicions are
aroused. The western larks do not utter alarums of that kind, but a
harsh "chack" instead, very similar to the call of the grackles. The
nesting habits of the eastern and western species are the same, their
domiciles being placed on the ground amid the grass, often prettily
arched over in the rear and made snug and neat.
It must not be thought, because my monograph on the western larks is
included in this chapter, that they dwell exclusively on the arid plain.
No; they revel likewise in the areas of verdure bordering the streams,
in the irrigated fields and meadows, and in the watered portions of the
upper mountain parks.
An interesting question is the following: Are the eastern and western
meadow-larks distinct species, or only varieties somewhat specialized by
differences of locality and environment? It is a problem over which the
scientific professors have had not a little disputation. My own opinion
is that they are distinct species and do not cohabit, and the conviction
is based on some special investigations, though not of the kind that are
made with the birds in hand. It has been my privilege to study both
forms in the field. In the first place, their vocal exhibitions are very
different, so much so as to indicate a marked diversity in the organic
structure of their larynxes. Much as I have listened to their
minstrelsy, I have never known one kind to borrow from the musical
repertory of the other. True, there are strains in the arias of the
westerners that closely resemble the clear, liquid whistle of the
eastern larks, but they occur right in the midst of the song and are
part and parcel of it, and therefore afford no evidence of mimicry or
amalgamation. Even the trills of the grassfinch and the song-sparrow
have points of similarity; does that prove that they borrow from each
other, or that espousals sometimes occur between the two species?
The habiliments of the two forms of larks are more divergent than would
appear at first blush. Above, the coloration of _neglecta_ (the western)
is paler and grayer than that of _magna_, the black markings being less
conspicuous, and those on the tertials and middle tail-feathers being
arranged in narrow, isolated bars, and not connected along the shaft.
While the flanks and under tail-coverts of _magna_ are distinctly washed
with buff, those of _neglecta_ are white, very faintly tinged with buff,
if at all. The yellow of the throat of the eastern form does not spread
out laterally over the malar region, as does that of the western lark.
All of which tends to prove that the two forms are distinct.
Early in the spring of 1901 the writer took a trip to Oklahoma in the
interest of bird-study, and found both kinds of meadow-larks extremely
abundant and lavish of their melodies on the fertile prairies. He
decided to carry on a little original investigation in the field of
inquiry now under discussion. One day, in a draw of the prairie, he
noticed a western meadow-lark which was unusually lyrical, having the
skill of a past-master in the art of trilling and gurgling and fluting.
Again and again I went to the place, on the same day and on different
days, and invariably found the westerner there, perching on the fence or
a weed-stem, and greeting me with his exultant lays. But, mark: no
eastern lark ever intruded on his preserve. In other and more distant
parts of the broad field the easterners were blowing their piccolos, but
they did not encroach on the domain of the lyrical westerner, who, with
his mate--now on her nest in the grass--had evidently jumped his claim
and held it with a high hand. In many other places in Oklahoma and
Kansas where both species dwell, I have noticed the same interesting
fact--that in the breeding season each form selects a special precinct,
into which the other form does not intrude. They perhaps put up some
kind of trespass sign. These observations have all but convinced me that
_S. magna_ and _S. neglecta_ are distinct species, and avoid getting
mixed up in their family affairs.