Birds of the Rockies

by Leander S. Keyser

The reader will perhaps recall that a flock of pine siskins were seen, two years prior, in a patch of pine scrub a short distance below Leadville, at which time I was uncertain as to their identity. Oddly enough, that was the only time I saw these birds in my first trip to Colorado, but here in the Georgetown region, only seventy-five or a hundred miles farther north, no species were more plentiful than they.

The siskins try to sing—I say "try" advisedly. It is one of the oddest bits of bird vocalization you ever heard, a wheezy little tune in the ascending scale—a kind of crescendo—which sounds as if it were produced by inhalation rather than exhalation. It is as labored as the alto strain of the clay-colored sparrow of the Kansas and Nebraska prairies, although it runs somewhat higher on the staff. The siskins seen at Georgetown moved about in good-sized flocks, feeding awhile on weed-seeds on the sunny slopes, and then wheeling with a merry chirp up to the pine-clad sides of the mountains. As they were still in the gregarious frame at Georgetown, I concluded that they had not yet begun to mate and build their nests in that locality. Afterwards I paid not a little attention to them farther up in the mountains, and saw several feeding their young, but, as their nests are built high in the pines, they are very difficult to find, or, if found, to examine. Our birdlets have superb powers of flight, and actually seem to revel in hurling themselves down a precipice or across a chasm with a recklessness that makes the observer's blood run cold. Sometimes they will dart out in the air from a steep mountain side, sing a ditty much like the goldfinch's, then circle back to their native pines on the dizzy cliff.

I must be getting back to my first ramble below Georgetown. Lured by the lyrics of the green-tailed towhee, I climbed the western acclivity a few hundred feet, but found that few birds choose such dry and eerie places for a habitat. Indeed, this was generally my experience in rambling among the mountains; the farther up the arid steeps, the fewer the birds. If you will follow a mountain brook up a sunny slope or open valley, you will be likely to find many birds; but wander away from the water courses, and you will look for them, oftentimes, in vain. The green-tailed towhees, spurred towhees, Audubon's warblers, and mountain hermit thrushes are all partial to acclivities, even very steep ones, but they do not select those that are too remote from the babbling brook to which they may conveniently resort for drinking and bathing.

A green and bushy spot a half mile below the village was the home of a number of white-crowned sparrows. None of them were seen on the plains or in the foothills; they had already migrated from the lower altitudes, and had sought their summer residences in the upper mountain valleys, where they may be found in great abundance from an elevation of eight thousand feet to copsy haunts here and there far above the timber-line hard by the fields of snow.

The white-crowns in the Georgetown valley seemed to be excessively shy, and their singing was a little too reserved to be thoroughly enjoyable, for which reason I am disposed to think that mating and nesting had not yet begun, or I should have found evidences of it, as their grassy cots on the ground and in the bushes are readily discovered. Other birds that were seen in this afternoon's ramble were Wilson's and Audubon's warblers, the spotted sandpiper, and that past-master in the art of whining, the killdeer. Another warbler's trill was heard in the thicket, but I was unable to identify the singer that evening, for he kept himself conscientiously hidden in the tanglewood. A few days later it turned out to be one of the most beautiful feathered midgets of the Rockies, Macgillivray's warbler, which was seen in a number of places, usually on bushy slopes. He and his mate often set up a great to-do by chirping and flitting about, and I spent hours in trying to find their nests, but with no other result than to wear out my patience and rubber boots. I can recall no other Colorado bird, either large or small, except the mountain jay, that made so much ado about nothing, so far as I could discover. But I love them still, on account of the beauty of their plumage and the gentle rhythm of their trills.

The next morning, chilly as the weather was—and it was cold enough to make one shiver even in bed—the western robins opened the day's concert with a splendid voluntary, waking me out of my slumbers and forcing me out of doors for an early walk. No one but a systematic ornithologist would be able to mark the difference between the eastern and western types of robins, for their manners, habits, and minstrelsy are alike, and their markings, too, so far as ordinary observation goes. The carolling of the two varieties is similar, so far as I could discern—the same cherry ringing melody, their voices having a like propensity to break into falsetto, becoming a veritable squeak, especially early in the season before their throat-harps are well tuned. With his powerful muscles and wide stretch of wing the robin is admirably adapted to the life of a mountaineer. You find him from the plains to the timber-line, sometimes even in the deepest cañons and on the most precipitous mountain sides, always the same busy, noisy, cheery body. One day I saw a robin dart like a meteor from the top of a high ridge over the cliffs to the valley below, where he alighted on a cultivated field almost as lightly as a flake of snow. He—probably she (what a trouble these pronouns are, anyway!)—gathered a mouthful of worms for his nestlings, then dashed up to the top of the ridge again, which he did, not by flying out into the air, but by keeping close up to the steep, cliffy wall, striking a rock here and twig there with his agile feet to help him in rising. The swiftness of the robin's movements about the gorges, abysses, and precipices of the mountains often inspires awe in the beholder's breast, and, on reflection, stirs him with envy. Many nests were found in the Georgetown valley, in woodsy and bushy places on the route to Gray's Peak as far as the timber-line, in the neighborhood of Boulder, in the Platte River Cañon, in South Park, and in the Blue River region beyond the Divide. Some of the nests contained eggs, others young in various stages of plumage, and still others were already deserted. For general ubiquity as a species, commend me to the American robin, whether of the eastern or western type. Wherever found he is a singer, and it is only to be regretted that—

"All will not hear thy sweet, out-pouring joy

That with morn's stillness blends the voice of song,

For over-anxious cares their souls employ,

That else, upon thy music borne along