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."