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."
[Illustration: "_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._
[Illustration]
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.