Birds of the Rockies

by Leander S. Keyser

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.