Thistle Butterfly
Western White
To omit all mention of the butterflies seen on this trip would be proof of avian monomania with a vengeance. The lad who was with me found a number of individuals of two species zigzagging over the summit, and occasionally settling upon the rocks right by the fields of snow. What kind of nectar they sipped I know not, for there were no flowers or verdure on the heights. They were the Painted Lady or Thistle Butterfly (Pyrameis cardui) and the Western White (Pieris occidentalis). He captured an individual of the latter species with his net, and to-day it graces his collection, a memento of a hard but glorious climb. The descent of the mountain was laborious and protracted, including some floundering in the snow, but was accomplished without accident. A warm supper in the miner's shack which we had leased prepared us for the restful slumbers of the night.
Although the weather was so cold that a thin coating of ice was formed on still water out of doors, the next morning the white-crowned sparrows were singing their sonatas long before dawn, and when at peep of day I stepped outside, they were flitting about the cabins as if in search of their breakfast. The evening before, I left the stable-door open while I went to bring the burros up from their grazing plat. When I returned with the animals, a white-crown flew out of the building just as I stepped into the entrance, almost fluttering against my feet, and chirping sharply at what he seemed to think a narrow escape. He had doubtless gone into the stable on a foraging expedition.
The day was spent in exploring the valley and steep mountain sides. A robin's nest was found a little below the timber-line on the slope of Mount Kelso. In the woods a short distance farther down, a gray-headed junco's nest was discovered after a good deal of patient waiting. A female was preening her feathers on a small pine-tree, a sure sign that she had recently come from brooding her eggs. Presently she began to flit about from the tree to the ground and back again, making many feints and starts, which proved that she was embarrassed by my espionage; but at last she disappeared and did not return. With quickened pulse I approached the place where I had last seen her. It was not long before she flew up with a nervous chirp, revealing a pretty domicile under a roof of green grass, with four daintily speckled eggs on the concave floor. I noticed especially that the doorway of the tiny cottage was open toward the morning sun.
At the timber-line there were ruby-crowned kinglets, mountain chickadees, and gray-headed juncos, while far above this wavering boundary a pair of red-shafted flickers were observed ambling about among the bushes and watching me as intently as I was watching them. I climbed far up the side of Mount Kelso, then around its rocky shoulder, following an old trail that led to several abandoned silver mines, but no new birds rewarded my toilsome quest, although I was pleased to learn that the pipits and leucostictes did not give the "go-by" to this grand old mountain, but performed their thrilling calisthenics in the air about its slopes and ravines with as much grace as they did on the loftier mountain peaks the day before. A beautiful fox and three cubs were seen among the large stones, and many mountain rats and a sly mink went scuttling about over the rocks.
