OVER THE DIVIDE AND BACK
One June day a Denver & Rio Grande train bore the bird-lover from Colorado Springs to Pueblo, thence westward to the mountains, up the Grand Cañon of the Arkansas River, through the Royal Gorge, past the smiling, sunshiny upper mountain valleys, over the Divide at Tennessee Pass, and then down the western slopes to the next stopping-place, which was Red Cliff, a village nestling in a deep mountain ravine at the junction of Eagle River and Turkey Creek. The following day, a little after "peep o' dawn," I was out on the street, and was impressed by a song coming from the trees on the acclivity above the village. "Surely that is a new song," I said to myself; "and yet it seems to have a familiar air." A few minutes of hard climbing brought me near enough to get my glass on the little lyrist, and then I found it was only the house-wren! "How could you be led astray by so familiar a song?" you inquire. Well, that is the humiliating part of the incident, for I have been listening to the house-wren's gurgling sonata for some twenty years—rather more than less—and should have recognized it at once; only it must be remembered that I was in a strange place, and had my ears and eyes set for avian rarities, and therefore blundered.[5]
[5] On this incident I quote a personal note from my friend, Mr. Aiken: "The wren of the Rockies is the western house-wren, but is the same form as that found in the Mississippi Valley. It is quite possible that a difference in song may occur, but I have not noticed any."