A Bird-Lover in the West

by Olive Thorne Miller

Slowly then I walked up the cañon, looking for my singer. Humming-birds were hovering before the bare rock as before a flower, perhaps sipping the water-drops that here and there trickled down, and large hawks, like mere specks against the blue, were soaring, but no wren could I see. At last I reached the end, with its waterfall fountain. Close within this ceaseless sprinkle, on a narrow ledge that was never dry, was placed—I had almost said grew—a bird's nest; whose, it were needless to ask. One American bird, and one only, chooses perpetual dampness for his environment,—the American dipper, or water ouzel.

Here I paused to muse over the spray-soaked cradle on the rock. In this strange place had lived a bird so eccentric that he prefers not only to nest under a continuous shower, through which he must constantly pass, but to spend most of his life in, not on the water. Shall we call him a fool or a philosopher? Is the water a protection, and from what? Has "damp, moist unpleasantness" no terrors for his fine feathers? Where now were the nestlings whose lullaby had been the music of the falling waters? Down that sheer rock, perhaps into the water at its foot, had been the first flight of the ouzel baby. Why had I come too late to see him?

But the hours were passing, while I had not seen, and, what was worse, had not heard my first charmer, the cañon wren. Leaving these perplexing conundrums unsolved, I turned slowly back down the walk, to resume my search. Perhaps fifty feet from the ouzel nest, as I lingered to admire the picturesque rapids in the brook, a slight movement drew my attention to a little projection on a stone, not six feet from me, where a small chipmunk sat pertly up, holding in his two hands, and eagerly nibbling—was it, could it be a strawberry in this rocky place?

Of course I stopped instantly to look at this pretty sight. I judged him to be a youngster, partly because of his evident fearlessness of his hereditary enemy, a human being; more on account of the saucy way in which he returned my stare; and most, perhaps, from the appearance of absorbing delight, in which there was a suggestion of the unexpected, with which he discussed that sweet morsel. Closely I watched him as he turned the treasure round and round in his deft little paws, and at last dropped the rifled hull. Would he go for another, and where? In an instant, with a parting glance at me, to make sure that I had not moved, he scrambled down his rocky throne, and bounded in great leaps over the path to a crumpled paper, which I saw at once was one of the bags with which tourists sow the earth. But its presence there did not rouse in my furry friend the indignation it excited in me. To him it was a treasure-trove, for into it he disappeared without a moment's hesitation; and almost before I had jumped to the conclusion that it contained the remains of somebody's luncheon, he reappeared, holding in his mouth another strawberry, bounded over the ground to his former seat, and proceeded to dispose of that one, also. The scene was so charming and his pleasure so genuine that I forgave the careless traveler on the spot, and only wished I had a kodak to secure a permanent picture of this unique strawberry festival.

As I loitered along, gazing idly at the brook, ever listening and longing for the wren song, I was suddenly struck motionless by a loud, shrill, and peculiar cry. It was plainly a bird voice, and it seemed to come almost from the stream itself. It ceased in a moment, and then followed a burst of song, liquid as the singing of the brook, and enchantingly sweet, though very low. I was astounded. Who could sing like that up in this narrow mountain gorge, where I supposed the cañon wren was king?

At the point where I stood, a straggling shrub, the only one for rods, hung over the brink. I silently sank to a seat behind it, lest I disturb the singer, and remained without movement. The baffling carol went on for some seconds, and for the only time in my life I wished I could put a spell upon brook-babble, that I might the better hear.

Cautiously I raised my glass to my eyes, and examined the rocks across the water, probably eight feet from me. Then arose again that strange cry, and at the same instant my eye fell upon a tiny ledge, level with the water, and perhaps six inches long, on which stood a small fellow-creature in great excitement. He was engaged in what I should call "curtsying"; that is, bending his leg joint, and dropping his plump little body for a second, then bobbing up to his fullest height, repeating the performance constantly,—looking eagerly out over the water the while, evidently expecting somebody. This was undoubtedly the bird's manner of begging for food,—a very pretty and well-bred way, too, vastly superior to the impetuous calls and demands of some young birds. The movement was "dipping," of course, and he was the dipper, or ouzel baby, that had been cradled in that fountain-dashed nest by the fall. He was not long out of it, either; for though fully dressed in his modest slate-color, with white feet, and white edgings to many of his feathers, he had hardly a vestige of a tail. He was a winsome baby, for all that.

While I studied the points of the stranger, breathless lest he should disappear before my eyes, he suddenly burst out with the strange call I had heard. It was clearly a cry of joy, of welcome, for out of the water, up on to the ledge beside him, scrambled at that moment a grown-up ouzel. He gave one poke into the wide-open mouth of the infant, then slipped back into the water, dropped down a foot or more, climbed out upon another little shelf in the rock, and in a moment the song arose. I watched the singer closely. The notes were so low and so mingled with the roar of the brook that even then I should not have been certain he was uttering them if I had not seen his throat and mouth distinctly. The song was really exquisite, and as much in harmony with the melody of the stream as the voice of the English sparrow is with the city sounds among which he dwells, and the plaintive refrain of the meadow-lark with the low-lying, silent fields where he spends his days.

But little cared baby ouzel for music, however ravishing. What to his mind was far more important was food,—in short, worms. His pretty begging continued, and the daring notion of attempting a perilous journey over the foot of water that separated him from his papa plainly entered his head. He hurried back and forth on the brink with growing agitation, and was seemingly about to plunge in, when the singer again entered the water, brought up another morsel, and then stood on the ledge beside the eager youngling, "dipping" occasionally himself, and showing every time he winked—as did the little one, also—snowy-white eyelids, in strange contrast to the dark slate-colored plumage.

This aesthetic manner of discharging family duties, alternating food for the body with rapture of the soul, continued for some time, probably until the young bird had as much as was good for him; and then supplies were cut off by the peremptory disappearance of the purveyor, who plunged with the brook over the edge of a rock, and was seen no more.