At nine o'clock on the morning of June 22, the two ramblers boarded a Colorado and Southern train, and bowled up Clear Creek Cañon 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 cañons, 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.
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.
