Part 11

For over a week we made Georgetown our headquarters, going off every day to the regions round about. Among my most treasured finds here was the nest of Audubon's warbler--my first. It was saddled in the crotch of a small pine a short distance up an acclivity, and was prettily roofed over with a thick network of branches and twigs. Four white, daintily speckled eggs lay in the bottom of the cup. While I was sitting in the shadow of the pine, some motion of mine caused the little owner to spring from her nest, and this led to its discovery. As she flitted about in the bushes, she uttered a sharp _chip_, sometimes consisting of a double note. The nest was about four feet from the ground, its walls built of grasses and weed-stems, and its concave little floor carpeted with cotton and feathers. A cosey cottage it was, fit for the little poets that erected it. Subsequently I made many long and tiresome efforts to find nests of the Audubons, but all these efforts were futile.

One enchanting day--the twenty-fourth of June--was spent in making a trip, with butterfly-net and field-glass, to Green Lake, an emerald gem set in the mountains at an altitude of ten thousand feet, a few miles from Georgetown. Before leaving the town, our first gray-headed junco for this expedition was seen. He had come to town for his breakfast, and was flitting about on the lawns and in the trees bordering the street, helping himself to such dainties as pleased his palate. It may be said here that the gray-headed juncos were observed at various places all along the way from Georgetown to Green Lake and far above that body of water. Not so with the broad-tailed hummers, which were not seen above about eight thousand five hundred feet, while the last warbling vireo of the day was seen and heard at an altitude of nine thousand feet, possibly a little more, when he decided that the air was as rare as was good for his health.

A short distance up the cañon of the west branch of Clear Creek, a new kind of flycatcher was first heard, and presently seen with my glass. He sat on a cliff or flitted from rock to bush. He uttered a sharp call, "Cheep, cheep, cheep"; his under parts were bright yellow, his upper parts yellow-olive, growing darker on the crown, and afterwards a nearer view revealed dark or dusky wings, yellowish or gray wing-bars, and yellow eye-rings. He was the western flycatcher, and bears close likeness to our eastern yellow-breasted species. Subsequently he was quite frequently met with, but never far above the altitude of Georgetown.

In the same cañon a beautiful Macgillivray's warbler was observed, and two water-ousels went dashing up the meandering stream, keeping close to the seething and roaring waters, but never stopping to sing or bid us the time of day. Very few ousels were observed in our rambles in this region, and no nests rewarded my search, whereas in the vicinity of Colorado Springs, as the reader will recall, these interesting birds were quite frequently near at hand. A mother robin holding a worm in her bill sped down the gulch with the swiftness of an arrow. We soon reached a belt of quaking asps where there were few birds. This was succeeded by a zone of pines. The green-tailed towhees did not accompany us farther in our climb than to an elevation of about nine thousand three hundred feet, but the siskins were chirping and cavorting about and above us all the way, many of them evidently having nests in the tops of the tall pines on the dizzy cliffs. Likewise the hermit thrushes were seen in suitable localities by the way, and also at the highest point we reached that day, an elevation of perhaps ten thousand five hundred feet.

While some species were, so to speak, our "companions in travel" the entire distance from the town to the lake, and others went with us only a part of the way, still other species found habitats only in the higher regions clambering far up toward the timber-line. Among these were the mountain jays, none of which were found as far down the range as Georgetown. They began to proclaim their presence by raucous calls as soon as we arrived in the vicinity of Green Lake. A family of them were hurtling about in the pine woods, allowing themselves to be inspected at short range, and filling the hollows with their uncanny calls. What a voice the mountain jay has! Nature did a queer thing when she put a "horse-fiddle" into the larynx of this bird--but it is not ours to ask the reason why, simply to study her as she is. In marked contrast with the harsh calls of these mountain hobos were the roulades of the sweet and musical ruby-crowned kinglets, which had absented themselves from the lower altitudes, but were abundant in the timber belts about ten thousand feet up the range and still higher.

[Illustration: _Red-naped Sapsuckers_

"_Chiselling grubs out of the bark_"]

On the border of the lake, among some gnarly pines, I stumbled upon a woodpecker that was entirely new to my eastern eyes--one that I had not seen in my previous touring among the heights of the Rockies. He was sedulously pursuing his vocation--a divine call, no doubt--of chiselling grubs out of the bark of the pine trees, making the chips fly, and producing at intervals that musical snare-drumming which always sets the poet to dreaming of sylvan solitudes. What was the bird? The red-naped sapsucker, a beautifully habited Chesterfield in plumes. He presently ambled up the steep mountain side, and buried himself in the pine forest, and I saw him no more, and none of his kith.

When I climbed up over a tangle of rocks to a woodsy ravine far above the lake, it seemed at first as if there were no birds in the place, that it was given up entirely to solitude; but the winged creatures were only shy and cautious for the nonce, waiting to learn something about the errand and disposition of their uninvited, or, rather, self-invited, guest, before they ventured to give him a greeting. Presently they discovered that he was not a collector, hunter, nest-robber, or ogre of any other kind, and there was the swish of wings around me, and a medley of chirps and songs filled the sequestered spot. Away up here the gray-headed juncos were trilling like warblers, and hopping about on their pine-needle carpet, creeping in and out among the rocks, hunting for tidbits. Here also was the mountain chickadee, found at this season in the heights hard by the alpine zone, singing his dulcet minor strain, "Te-te-re-e-e, te-eet," sometimes adding another "te-eet" by way of special emphasis and adornment. Oh, the sweet little piper piping only for Pan! The loneliness of the place was accentuated by the sad cadenzas of the mountain hermit thrushes. Swallows of some kind--cliff-swallows, no doubt--were silently weaving invisible filigree across the sky above the tops of the stately pines.

In the afternoon we made our way, with not a little laborious effort, to the farther end of the lake, across which a red-shafted flicker would occasionally wing its galloping flight; thence through a wilderness of large rocks and fallen pines to a beckoning ridge, where, to our surprise, another beautiful aqueous sheet greeted our vision in the valley beyond. Descending to its shores, we had still another surprise--its waters were brown instead of green. Here were two mountain lakes not more than a quarter of a mile apart, one of which was green and the other brown, each with a beauty all its own. In the brown lake near the shore there were glints of gold as the sun shone through its ripples on the rocks at the bottom. Afterwards we learned that the name of this liquid gem was Clear Lake, and that the western branch of Clear Creek flows through it, tarrying a while to sport and dally with the sunbeams. While Green Lake was embowered in a forest of pine, its companion lay in the open sunlight, unflecked by the shadow of a tree.

At the upper end of Clear Lake we found a green, bosky and bushy corner, which formed the summer tryst of white-crowned sparrows, Wilson's warblers, and broad-tailed humming-birds, none of which could find a suitable habitat on the rocky, forest-locked shores of Green Lake. A pigeon hawk, I regretted to note, had settled among the bushes, and was watching for quarry, making the only fly in the amber of the enchanted spot. A least flycatcher flitted about in the copse some distance up a shallow runway. I trudged up the valley about a mile above Clear Lake, and found a green, open meadow, with clumps of bushes here and there, in which a few white-crowned sparrows and Wilson's warblers had taken up at least a temporary dwelling; but the wind was blowing shiveringly from the snow-capped mountains not many miles away, and there was still a wintry aspect about the vale. The cold evidently affected the birds as it did myself, for they lisped only a few bars of song in a half-hearted way. Evening was approaching, and the two travellers--the human ones, I mean--started on the trail down the valleys and cañons toward Georgetown, which they reached at dusk, tired, but thankful for the privilege of spending an idyllic day among their winged companions.

[Illustration: _Pigeon Hawk_

"_Watching for quarry_"]

Following a wagon road, the next day, across a pass some distance below Georgetown brought us into another valley, whose green meadows and cultivated fields lay a little lower, perhaps a couple hundred feet, than the valley from which we had come. Here we found many Brewer's blackbirds, of which there were very few in the vicinity of Georgetown. They were feeding their young, some of which had already left the nest. No red-winged blackbirds had been seen in the Georgetown valley, while here there was a large colony of them, many carrying food to the bantlings in grass and bush. Otherwise there was little difference between the avi-fauna of the two valleys.

One morning I climbed the steep mountain just above Georgetown, the one that forms the divide between the two branches of Clear Creek. A western chipping sparrow sat trilling on the top of a small pine, as unafraid as the chippie that rings his silvery peals about your dooryard in the East; nor could I distinguish any difference between the minstrelsy of this westerner and his well-known cousin of Ohio. He dexterously caught an insect on the wing, having learned that trick, perhaps, from his neighbor, the little western flycatcher, which also lived on the slope. Hermit thrushes, Audubon's warblers, and warbling vireos dwelt on the lower part of the acclivity. When I climbed far up the steep wall, scarcely able to cling to its gravelly surface, I found very few birds; only a flycatcher and an Audubon's warbler, while below me the hermit thrushes were chanting a sacred oratorio in the pine woods.

On another day the train bore us around the famous "Loop" to Silver Plume. In the beautiful pine grove at the terminus of the railway there were many birds--siskins, chipping sparrows, western robins and ruby-crowned kinglets; and they were making the place vocal with melody, until I began to inspect them with my glass, when they suddenly lapsed into a silence that was as trying as it was profound. By and by, discretion having had her perfect work, they metaphorically came out of their shells and permitted an inspection. Above the railway I saw one of the few birds of my entire Rocky Mountain outing that I was unable to identify. That little feathered Sphinx--what could he have been? To quote from my note-book, "His song, as he sits quietly on a twig in a pine tree, is a rich gurgling trill, slightly like that of a house-wren, but fuller and more melodious, with an air about it that makes me feel almost like writing a poem. The bird is in plain view before me, and I may watch him either with or without my glass; he has a short, conical bill; his upper parts are gray or olive-gray; cervical patch of a greenish tinge; under parts whitish, spotted with dusk or brown. The bill is white or horn-color, and is quite heavy, I should say heavier than that of any sparrow I know. The bird continued to sing for a long time and at frequent intervals, not even stopping when the engine near at hand blew off steam, although he turned his head and looked a little startled." I saw this species nowhere else in my Colorado rambles, and can find no description in the systematic manuals that helps to clear up the mystery, and so an _avis incognita_ he must remain for the present.

Has mention been made of a few house-finches that were seen in Georgetown? Only a few, however, for they prefer the towns and cities of the plain. Several house-wrens were also seen in the vicinity of the Georgetown Loop as well as elsewhere in the valley. The "Loop," although a monumental work of human genius and daring, has its peculiar attractions for the student of natural history, for in the cañon itself, which is somewhat open and not without bushy haunts, and on the precipitous mountain sides, a few birds set up their Lares and Penates, and mingle their songs of domestic felicity with the roar of the torrent and the passing trains. Darting like zigzag lightning about the cliffs, the broad-tailed humming-bird cuts the air with his sharp, defiant buzz, until you exclaim with the poet:

"Is it a monster bee, Or is it a midget bird, Or yet an air-born mystery That now yon marigold has stirred?"

[Illustration: "_Solo singing in the thrush realm_"]

Among the birds that dwell on the steep mountain sides above the "Loop" hollow are the melodious green-tailed towhees, lisping their chansons of good-will to breeze and torrent, while in the copse of asps in the hollow itself the warbling vireo and the western flycatcher hold sway, the former rehearsing his recitative all the day long, and the latter chirping his protest at every human intrusion. On a pine-clad shelf between the second fold of the "Loop" and what is known as the "Great Fill" I settled (at least, to my own satisfaction) a long-disputed point in regard to the vocalization of the mountain hermit thrush. Again and again I had noticed a peculiarity about the hermit's minstrelsy--whenever the music reached my ear, it came in two runs, the first quite high in the scale, the second perhaps an octave lower. For a long time I supposed that two thrushes were singing responsively, but here at the "Loop," after listening for a couple of hours, it occurred to me as improbable that there would invariably be a respondent when a thrush lifted up his voice in song. Surely there would sometimes, at least, be solo singing in the thrush realm. And so the conclusion was forced upon me that both strains emanated from the same throat, that each vocalist was its own respondent. It was worth while to clamber laboriously about the "Loop" to settle a point like that--at all events, it was worth while for one admirer of the birds.

HO! FOR GRAY'S PEAK!

[Illustration: PLATE VI

TOWNSEND'S SOLITAIRE--_Myiadestes townsendii_]

[Illustration]

By the uninitiated it may be regarded simply as fun and pastime to climb a mountain whose summit soars into cloudland; in reality it is serious business, not necessarily accompanied with great danger, but always accomplished by laborious effort. However, it is better for the clamberer to look upon his undertaking as play rather than work. Should he come to feel that it is actual toil, he might soon weary of a task engaged in so largely for its own sake, and decide to expend his time and energy in something that would "pay better." Moreover, if he is impelled by a hobby--ornithology, for instance--in addition to the mere love of mountaineering, he will find that something very near akin to wings has been annexed to the climbing gear of which he is naturally possessed.

The morning of June 27 saw my youthful companion and myself mounted each upon a shaggy burro, scrambling up the steep hill above Georgetown, en route for Gray's Peak, the ascent of which was the chief goal of our ambition in coming to the Rockies on the present expedition. The distance from Georgetown to the summit of this peak is fourteen miles, and the crest itself is fourteen thousand four hundred and forty-one feet above sea-level, almost three hundred feet higher than Pike's Peak, and cannot be scaled by means of a cog-wheel railway or any other contrivance that uses steam or electricity as a motor. Indeed, the only motor available at the time of our ascent--that is, for the final climb--was "shank's horses," very useful and mostly safe, even if a little plebeian. We had been wise enough not to plunge at once among the heights, having spent almost a week rambling over the plains, mesas, foothills, and lower ranges, then had been occupied for five or six days more in exploring the valleys and mountain sides in the vicinity of Georgetown, and thus, by gradually approaching them, we had become inured to "roughing it" in the higher altitudes when we reached them, and suffered no ill effects from the rarefied atmosphere.

We passed the famous "Georgetown Loop," crept at a snail's pace--for that is the natural gait of the burro--through the town of Silver Plume, and pursued our leisurely journey toward the beckoning, snow-clad heights beyond. No, we did not hurry, for two reasons: First, our little four-footers would not or could not quicken their pace, urge them as we would; second, we desired to name all the birds along the route, and that "without a gun," as Emerson mercifully enjoins.

Have you ever ridden a burro? Have you ever been astride of an old one, a hirsute, unkempt, snail-paced, obstinate one, which thinks he knows better what gait he ought to assume than you do? If you have not, I venture to suggest modestly that your education and moral discipline are not quite complete. The pair which we had hired were slow and headstrong enough to develop the patience of Job in a most satisfactory way, and to test it, too. They were as homely as the proverbial "mud fence" is supposed to be. Never having seen a fence of that kind, I speak with some degree of caution, not wanting to cast any disparagement upon something of which I have so little knowledge. If our long-eared companions had ever seen a curry-comb, it must have been in the days of Noah. You see, we were "tenderfoots," as far as having had any experience with burros was concerned, or we might have selected a more sprightly pair for our fellow-pilgrims. A fine picture, fit for the camera or the artist's brush, we presented as we crept with the speed of a tortoise along the steep mountain roads and trails. Our "jacks," as Messrs. Longears are called colloquially, were not lazy--oh, no! they were simply averse to leaving home! Their domestic ties were so strong they bound them with cords of steel and hooks of iron to stall and stable-yard! The thought of forsaking friends and kindred even for only a few days wrung their loving hearts with anguish! No wonder we had a delicate and pathetic task on hand when we attempted to start our caravan up the mountain road. From side to side the gentle animals wabbled, their load of grief weighing them down tenfold more than the loads on their backs, and times without count they were prompted to veer about and "turn again home."

Much labor and time and patience were expended in persuading our steeds to crawl up the hill, but I am delighted to say that no profane history was quoted, as we were a strictly moral crowd. At length we arrived in state at the village of Silver Plume. Canter into the town like a gang of border ruffians we did not; we entered deliberately, as became a dignified company of travellers. But here a new difficulty confronted us, stared us blankly in the face. Our little charges could not be convinced that there was any occasion for going farther than the town. They seemed to have conscientious scruples about the matter; so they stopped without any invitation from their riders, sidled off, turned in toward the residences, stores, groceries, shoe-shops, drugstores, barns, and even the saloons, the while the idlers on the streets and the small boys were gawking at us, smiling in a half-suppressed way, and making quaint remarks in which we could see no wisdom nor humor. We had not come into the town, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, merely to furnish the villagers amusement. Applying our canes and straps forcibly to the haunches and rumps of our burros only seemed to embarrass the poor creatures, for you can readily see how they would reason the matter out from their own premises: If they were to go no farther, as had been decided by themselves, why should their riders belabor them in that merciless way? For downright dialectics commend me to the Rocky Mountain burro.

Finally a providence in the shape of two small boys came to our rescue, and in a most interesting and effective way. Seeing the predicament we were in, and appreciating the gravity of the situation, those nimble-witted lads picked up a couple of clubs from the street, and, getting in the rear of our champing steeds, began to pound them over the haunches. For small boys they delivered sturdy blows. Now, if there is anything that will make a burro move dexterously out of his tracks, it is to get behind him with a club and beat a steady tattoo on his hams and legs. No sooner did the boys begin to apply their clubs in good earnest than our burros began to print tracks in quick succession on the dusty road, and we went gayly through the town, the lads making a merry din with their shouts and whacks, mingled with the patter of hoofs on the street. It was so dramatic that even the women came to their doors to witness the pageant. We tried not to laugh, and so did the delicately mannered spectators, but I suspect that a good deal of laughing was done on the sly, in spite of the canons of etiquette.