A Bird-Lover in the West

by Olive Thorne Miller

Nor is the variety of the lark song less noteworthy than its quality. That each bird has a large répertoire I cannot assert, for my opportunities for study have been too limited; but it is affirmed by those who know him better, that he has, and I fully believe it.

One thing is certainly true of nearly if not quite all of our native birds, that no two sing exactly alike, and the close observer soon learns to distinguish between the robins and the song-sparrows of a neighborhood, by their notes alone. The Western lark seems even more than others to individualize his utterances, so that constant surprises reward the discriminating listener. During two months' bird-study in that delightful cañon-hidden grove at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain, one particular bird song was for weeks an unsolved mystery. The strain consisted of three notes in loud, ringing tones, which syllabled themselves very plainly in my ear as "Whip-for-her."

This unseemly, and most emphatic, demand came always from a distance, and apparently from the top of some tall tree, and it proved to be most tantalizing; for although the first note invariably brought me out, opera-glass in hand, I was never able to come any nearer to a sight of the unknown than the sway of a twig he had just left.

One morning, however, before I was up, the puzzling songster visited the little grove under my windows, and I heard his whole song, of which it now appeared the three notes were merely the conclusion. The performance was eccentric. It began with a soft warble, apparently for his sole entertainment, then suddenly, as if overwhelmed by memory of wrongs received or of punishment deserved, he interrupted his tender melody with a loud, incisive "Whip-for-her!" in a totally different manner. His nearness, however, solved the mystery; the ring of the meadow-lark was in his tones, and I knew him at once. I had not suspected his identity, for the Western bird does not take much trouble to keep out of sight, and, moreover, his song is rarely less than six or eight notes in length.

Another unique singer of the highlands is the horned lark. One morning in June a lively carriage party passing along the mountain side, on a road so bare and bleak that it seemed nothing could live there, was startled by a small gray bird, who suddenly dashed out of the sand beside the wheels, ran across the path, and flew to a fence on the other side. Undisturbed, perhaps even stimulated, by the clatter of two horses and a rattling mountain wagon, undaunted by the laughing and talking load, the little creature at once burst into song, so loud as to be heard above the noisy procession, and so sweet that it silenced every tongue.

"How exquisite! What is it?" we asked each other, at the end of the little aria.

"It's the gray sand bird," answered the native driver.

"Otherwise the horned lark," added the young naturalist, from his broncho behind the carriage.

Let not his name mislead: this pretty fellow, in soft, gray-tinted plumage, is not deformed by "horns;" it is only two little tufts of feathers, which give a certain piquant, wide-awake expression to his head, that have fastened upon him a title so incongruous. The nest of the desert-lover is a slight depression in the barren earth, nothing more; and the eggs harmonize with their surroundings in color. The whole is concealed by its very openness, and as hard to find, as the bobolink's cradle in the trackless grass of the meadow.

Most persistent of all the singers of the grove beside the house was the yellow warbler, a dainty bit of featherhood the size of one's thumb. On the Atlantic coast his simple ditty is tender, and so low that it must be listened for; but in that land of "skies so blue they flash," he sings it at the top of his voice, louder than the robin song as we know it, and easily heard above the roar of the wind and the brawling of the brook he haunts.