A Bird-Lover in the West

Having circumvented the fence, the next task was to descend the steep sides of the ravine. The difficulty was, not to get down, for that could be done almost anywhere, but to go...

While the young father was manifesting his anxiety in this way, the mother showed hers in another; she took to watching, hardly leaving the place at all. When she had her babies...

Often, in those days, I wished I could put myself on a level with that little castle in the air, and look into it, filled to the brim with beauty as I knew it was. But I had not...

Suddenly the bird flew to the ground, and, so quickly that we did not see the movement, the head of the snake was turned over toward her, proving that it was the bird, and not u...

What drew us first to the pasture--which we came to at last--was our search for a magpie's nest. The home of this knowing fellow is the Rocky Mountain region, and, naturally, he...

This opinion, oft repeated, did not settle the matter in my mind, for I long ago discovered that none are so ignorant of the birds and flowers of a neighborhood as most of the p...

But the hours were passing, while I had not seen, and, what was worse, had not heard my first charmer, the canyon wren. Leaving these perplexing conundrums unsolved, I turned sl...

One morning the whole family happened to meet at table. The mother came first, and then the three young ones, all of whom were trying their best to feed themselves. At last came...

First in the morning, and last at night, all through June, came to me the song of the dove. As early as four o'clock his notes began, and then, if I got up to look out on the la...

Let me not, however, be unjust to the mountains I love. There is a range which satisfies my soul, and will rest in my memory forever, a beautiful picture, or rather a whole gall...

In making close acquaintance with them, one cannot help longing to prescribe to the whole blackbird family something to clear their bronchial tubes; every tone is husky, and the...

Even the humming-bird, who contents himself in this part of the world with a modest hum, heard but a short distance away, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains may almost be called...

One of the richest wild gardens I know is a bare, open spot in a cottonwood grove, part of it tunneled by ants, which run over it by millions, and the rest a jumble of bowlders...

The studies in this volume were all made, as the title indicates, in the West; part of them in Colorado (1891), in Utah (1893), and the remainder (1892) in what I have called "T...

Then when the pretty creature was all in beautiful order, her emerald-green back and white breast immaculate, when she had shaken herself out, and darted out and drawn back many...