"Solo singing in the thrush realm"
Among the birds that dwell on the steep mountain sides above the "Loop" hollow are the melodious green-tailed towhees, lisping their chansons of good-will to breeze and torrent, while in the copse of asps in the hollow itself the warbling vireo and the western flycatcher hold sway, the former rehearsing his recitative all the day long, and the latter chirping his protest at every human intrusion. On a pine-clad shelf between the second fold of the "Loop" and what is known as the "Great Fill" I settled (at least, to my own satisfaction) a long-disputed point in regard to the vocalization of the mountain hermit thrush. Again and again I had noticed a peculiarity about the hermit's minstrelsy—whenever the music reached my ear, it came in two runs, the first quite high in the scale, the second perhaps an octave lower. For a long time I supposed that two thrushes were singing responsively, but here at the "Loop," after listening for a couple of hours, it occurred to me as improbable that there would invariably be a respondent when a thrush lifted up his voice in song. Surely there would sometimes, at least, be solo singing in the thrush realm. And so the conclusion was forced upon me that both strains emanated from the same throat, that each vocalist was its own respondent. It was worth while to clamber laboriously about the "Loop" to settle a point like that—at all events, it was worth while for one admirer of the birds.
HO! FOR GRAY'S PEAK!
