Chapter 2
His song and some of his calls bear a close resemblance to those of the common goldfinch, but he is by no means a mere duplicate of that bird; he has an individuality of his own. While his flight is undulatory, the waviness is not so deeply and distinctly marked; nor does he sing a cheery cradle-song while swinging through the ether, although he often utters a series of unmusical chirps. One of the most pleasingly pensive sounds heard in my western rambles was the little coaxing call of this bird, whistled mostly by the female, I think. No doubt it is the tender love talk of a young wife or mother, which may account for its surpassing sweetness.
Every lover of feathered kind is interested in what may be called comparative ornithology, and therefore I wish to speak of another western form and its eastern prototype--Bullock's oriole, which in Colorado takes the place of the Baltimore oriole known east of the plains all the way to the Atlantic coast. However, Bullock's is not merely a variety or subspecies, but a well-defined species of the oriole family, his scientific title being _Icterus bullocki_.
Like our familiar Lord Baltimore, he bravely bears black and orange; but in _bullocki_ the latter color invades the sides of the neck, head, and forehead, leaving only a small black bow for the throat and a narrow black stripe running back over the crown and down the back of the neck; whereas in _Icterus galbula_ the entire head and neck are black. Brilliant as Bullock's oriole is, he does not seem to be anxious to display his fineries, for he usually makes it a point to keep himself ensconced behind a clump of foliage, so that, while you may hear a desultory piping in the trees, apparently inviting your confidence, it will be a long time before you can get more than a provoking glimpse of the jolly piper himself. "My gorgeous apparel was not made for parade," seems to be his modest disclaimer.
He is quite a vocalist. Here is a quotation from my lead-pencil, dashes and all: "Bullock's oriole--fine singer--voice stronger than orchard oriole's--song not quite so well articulated or so elaborate, but louder and more resonant--better singer than the Baltimore." It might be added that Bullock's, like the orchard, but unlike the Baltimore, pipes a real tune, with something of a theme running through its intermittent outbursts. The plumage of the young bird undergoes some curious changes, and what I took to be the year-old males seemed to be the most spirited musicians.
Maurice Thompson's tribute to the Baltimore oriole will apply to that bird's western kinsman. He calls him:--
"Athlete of the air-- Of fire and song a glowing core;"
and then adds, with tropical fervor:
"A hot flambeau on either wing Rimples as you pass me by; 'T is seeing flame to hear you sing, 'T is hearing song to see you fly.
* * * * *
"When flowery hints foresay the berry, On spray of haw and tuft of brier, Then, wandering incendiary, You set the maple swamps afire!"
Many nests of Bullock's oriole rewarded my slight search. They are larger and less compactly woven than the Baltimore's, and have a woolly appearance exteriorly, as if the down of the Cottonwood trees had been wrought into the fabric. Out on the plains I counted four dangling nests, old and new, on one small limb; but that, of course, was unusual, there being only one small clump of trees within a radius of many miles.
In the vicinity of Manitou many trips were taken by the zealous pedestrian. Some of the dry, steep sides of the first range of mountains were hard climbing, but it was necessary to make the effort in order to discover their avian resources. One of the first birds met with on these unpromising acclivities was the spurred towhee of the Rockies. In his attire he closely resembles the towhee, or "chewink," of the East, but has as an extra ornament a beautiful sprinkling of white on his back and wings, which makes him look as if he had thrown a gauzy mantle of silver over his shoulders.
But his song is different from our eastern towhee's. My notes say that it is "a cross between the song of the chewink and that of dickcissel," and I shall stand by that assertion until I find good reason to disown it--should that time ever come. The opening syllabication is like dickcissel's; then follows a trill of no specially definable character. There are times when he sings with more than his wonted force, and it is then that his tune bears the strongest likeness to the eastern towhee's. But his alarm-call! It is no "chewink" at all, but almost as close a reproduction of a cat's mew as is the catbird's well-known call. Such crosses and anomalies does this country produce!
On the arid mountain sides among the stunted bushes, cactus plants, sand, and rocks, this quaint bird makes his home, coming down into the valleys to drink at the tinkling brooks and trill his roundelays. Many, many times, as I was following a deep fissure in the mountains, his ditty came dripping down to me from some spot far up the steep mountain side--a little cascade of song mingling with the cascades of the brooks. The nests are usually placed under a bush on the sides of the mesas and mountains.
And would you believe it? Colorado furnishes another towhee, though why he should have been put into the Pipilo group by the ornithologists is more than I can tell at this moment. He has no analogue in the East. True, he is a bird of the bushes, running sometimes like a little deer from one clump to another; but if you should see him mount a boulder or a bush, and hear him sing his rich, theme-like, finely modulated song, you would aver that he is closer kin to the thrushes or thrashers than to the towhees. There is not the remotest suggestion of the towhee minstrelsy in his prolonged and well-articulated melody. It would be difficult to find a finer lyrist among the mountains.
But, hold! I have neglected to introduce this pretty Mozart of the West. He is known by an offensive and inapt title--the green-tailed towhee. Much more appropriately might he be called the chestnut-crowned towhee, for his cope is rich chestnut, and the crest is often held erect, making him look quite cavalier-like. It is the most conspicuous part of his toilet. His upper parts are grayish-green, becoming slightly deeper green on the tail, from which fact he derives his common name. His white throat and chin are a further diagnostic mark. The bright yellow of the edge of the wings, under coverts and axillaries is seldom seen, on account of the extreme wariness of the bird.
In most of the dry and bushy places I found him at my elbow--or, rather, some distance away, but in evidence by his mellifluous song. Let me enumerate the localities in which I found my little favorite: Forty miles out on the plain among some bushes of a shallow dip; among the foothills about Colorado Springs and Manitou; on many of the open bushy slopes along the cog-road leading to Pike's Peak, but never in the dark ravines or thick timber; among the bushes just below timber-line on the southern acclivity of the peak; everywhere around the village of Buena Vista; about four miles below Leadville; and, lastly, beyond the range at Red Cliff and Glenwood.[1]
[1] This list was greatly enlarged in my second trip to Colorado in 1901.
The song, besides its melodious quality, is full of expression. In this respect it excels the liquid chansons of the mountain hermit thrush, which is justly celebrated as a minstrel, but which does not rehearse a well-defined theme. The towhee's song is sprightly and cheerful, wild and free, has the swing of all outdoors, and is not pitched to a minor key. It gives you the impression that a bird which sings so blithesome a strain must surely be happy in his domestic relations.
Among the Rockies the black-headed grosbeak is much in evidence, and so is his cheerful, good-tempered song, which is an exact counterpart of the song of the rose-breasted grosbeak, his eastern kinsman. Neither the rose-breast nor the cardinal is to be found in Colorado, but they are replaced by the black-headed and blue grosbeaks, the former dwelling among the lower mountains, the latter occurring along the streams of the plains. Master black-head and his mate are partial to the scrub oaks for nesting sites. I found one nest with four callow bantlings in it, but, much to my grief and anger, at my next call it had been robbed of its precious treasures. A few days later, not far from the same place, a female was building a nest, and I am disposed to believe that she was the mother whose children had been kidnapped.
Instead of the scarlet and summer tanagers, the Rocky Mountain region is honored with that beautiful feathered gentleman, the Louisiana tanager, most of whose plumage is rich, glossy yellow, relieved by black on the wings, back, and tail; while his most conspicuous decoration is the scarlet or crimson tinting of his head and throat, shading off into the yellow of the breast. These colors form a picturesque combination, especially if set against a background of green. The crimson staining gives him the appearance of having washed his face in some bright-red pigment, and like an awkward child, blotched his bosom with it in the absence of a napkin.
So far as I could analyze it, there is no appreciable difference between his lyrical performances and those of the scarlet tanager, both being a kind of lazy, drawling song, that is slightly better than no bird music at all. One nest was found without difficulty. It was placed on one of the lower branches of a pine tree by the roadside at the entrance to Engleman's Cañon. As a rule, the males are not excessively shy, as so many of the Rocky Mountain birds are. The tanagers were seen far up in the mountains, as well as among the foothills, and also at Red Cliff and Glenwood on the western side of the Divide.
A unique character in feathers, one that is peculiar to the West, is the magpie, who would attract notice wherever he should deign to live, being a sort of grand sachem of the outdoor aviary. In some respects the magpies are striking birds. In flight they present a peculiar appearance; in fact, they closely resemble boys' kites with their long, slender tails trailing in the breeze. I could not avoid the impression that their tails were superfluous appendages, but no doubt they serve the birds a useful purpose as rudders and balancing-poles. The magpie presents a handsome picture as he swings through the air, the iridescent black gleaming in the sun, beautifully set off with snowy-white trimmings on both the upper and lower surfaces of the wings. On the perch or on the wing he is an ornament to any landscape. As to his voice--well, he is a genuine squawker. There is not, so far as I have observed, a musical cord in his larynx,[2] and I am sure he does not profess to be a musical genius, so that my criticism will do him no injury. All the use he has for his voice seems to be to call his fellows to a new-found banquet, or give warning of the approach of an interloper upon his chosen preserves. His cry, if you climb up to his nest, is quite pitiful, proving that he has real love for his offspring. Perhaps the magpies have won their chief distinction as architects. Their nests are really remarkable structures, sometimes as large as fair-sized tubs, the framework composed of good-sized sticks, skilfully plaited together, and the cup lined with grass and other soft material, making a cosey nursery for the infantile magpies. Then the nest proper is roofed over, and has an entrance to the apartment on either side. When you examine the structure closely, you find that it fairly bristles with dry twigs and sticks, and it is surprising how large some of the branches are that are braided into the domicile. All but one of the many nests I found were deserted, for my visit was made in June, and the birds, as a rule, breed earlier than that month. Some were placed in bushes, some in willow and cottonwood trees, and others in pines; and the birds themselves were almost ubiquitous, being found on the plains, among the foothills, and up in the mountains as far as the timber-line, not only close to human neighborhoods, but also in the most inaccessible solitudes.
[2] In this volume the author has made use of the terminology usually employed in describing bird music. Hence such words as "song," "chant," "vocal cords," etc., are of frequent occurrence. In reality the writer's personal view is that the birds are whistlers, pipers, fluters, and not vocalists, none of the sounds they produce being real voice tones. The reader who may desire to go into this matter somewhat technically is referred to Maurice Thompson's chapter entitled "The Anatomy of Bird-Song" in his "Sylvan Secrets," and the author's article, "Are Birds Singers or Whistlers?" in "Our Animal Friends" for June, 1901.
In one of my excursions along a stream below Colorado Springs, one nest was found that was still occupied by the brooding bird. It was a bulky affair, perhaps half as large as a bushel basket, placed in the crotch of a tree about thirty feet from the ground. Within this commodious structure was a globular apartment which constituted the nest proper. Thus it was roofed over, and had an entrance at each side, so that the bird could go into his house at one doorway and out at the other, the room being too small to permit of his turning around in it. Thinking the nest might be occupied, in a tentative way I tossed a small club up among the branches, when to my surprise a magpie sprang out of the nest, and, making no outcry, swung around among the trees, appearing quite nervous and shy. When she saw me climbing the tree, she set up such a heart-broken series of cries that I permitted sentiment to get the better of me, and clambered down as fast as I could, rather than prolong her distress. Since then I have greatly regretted my failure to climb up to the nest and examine its contents, which might have been done without the least injury to the owner's valuable treasures. A nestful of magpie's eggs or bairns would have been a gratifying sight to my bird-hungry eyes.
One bird which is familiar in the East as well as the West deserves attention on account of its choice of haunts. I refer to the turtle dove, which is much hardier than its mild and innocent looks would seem to indicate. It may be remarked, in passing, that very few birds are found in the deep cañons and gorges leading up to the higher localities; but the doves seem to constitute the one exception to the rule; for I saw them in some of the gloomiest defiles through which the train scurried in crossing the mountains. For instance, in the cañon of the Arkansas River many of them were seen from the car window, a pair just beyond the Royal Gorge darting across the turbulent stream to the other side. A number were also noticed in the darkest portions of the cañon of the Grand River, where one would think not a living creature could coax subsistence from the bare rocks and beetling cliffs. Turtle doves are so plentiful in the West that their distribution over every available feeding ground seems to be a matter of social and economic necessity.
BALD PEAKS AND GREEN VALES
One of my chief objects in visiting the Rockies was to ascend Pike's Peak from Manitou, and make observations on the birds from the base to the summit. A walk one afternoon up to the Halfway House and back--the Halfway House is only about one-third of the way to the top--convinced me that to climb the entire distance on foot would be a useless expenditure of time and effort. An idea struck me: Why not ride up on the cog-wheel train, and then walk down, going around by some of the valleys and taking all the time needed for observations on the avi-faunal tenantry? That was the plan pursued, and an excellent one it proved.
When the puffing cog-wheel train landed me on the summit, I was fresh and vigorous, and therefore in excellent condition physically and mentally to enjoy the scenery and also to ride my hobby at will over the realm of cloudland. The summit is a bald area of several acres, strewn with immense fragments of granite, with not a spear of grass visible. One of the signal-station men asked a friend who had just come up from the plain, "Is there anything green down below? I'd give almost anything to see a green patch of some kind." There was a yearning strain in his tones that really struck me as pathetic. Here were visitors revelling in the magnificence of the panorama, their pulses tingling and their feelings in many cases too exalted for expression; but those whose business or duty it was to remain on the summit day after day soon found life growing monotonous, and longed to set their eyes on some patch of verdure. To the visitors, however, who were in hale physical condition, the panorama of snow-clad ranges and isolated peaks was almost overwhelming. In the gorges and sheltered depressions of the old mountain's sides large fields of snow still gleamed in the sun and imparted to the air a frosty crispness.
When the crowd of tourists, after posing for their photographs, had departed on the descending car, I walked out over the summit to see what birds, if any, had selected an altitude of fourteen thousand one hundred and forty-seven feet above sea-level for their summer home. Below me, to the east, stretched the gray plains running off to the skyline, while the foothills and lower mountains, which had previously appeared so high and rugged and difficult of access, now seemed like ant-hills crouching at the foot of the giant on whose crown I stood. Off to the southwest, the west, and the northwest, the snowy ranges towered, iridescent in the sunlight. In contemplating this vast, overawing scene, I almost forgot my natural history, and wanted to feast my eyes for hours on its ever-changing beauty; but presently I was brought back to a consciousness of my special vocation by a sharp chirp. Was it a bird, or only one of those playful little chipmunks that abound in the Rockies? Directly there sounded out on the serene air another ringing chirp, this time overhead, and, to my delight and surprise, a little bird swung over the summit, then out over the edge of the cliff, and plunged down into the fearsome abyss of the "Bottomless Pit." Other birds of the same species soon followed his example, making it evident that this was not a birdless region. Unable to identify the winged aeronauts, I clambered about over the rocks of the summit for a while, then slowly made my way down the southern declivity of the mountain for a short distance. Again my ear was greeted with that loud, ringing chirp, and now the bird uttering it obligingly alighted on a stone not too far away to be seen distinctly through my binocular. Who was the little waif that had chosen this sky-invading summit for its summer habitat? At first I mistook it for a horned lark, and felt so sure my decision was correct that I did not look at the bird as searchingly as I should have done, thereby learning a valuable lesson in thoroughness. The error was corrected by my friend, Mr. Charles E. Aiken, of Colorado Springs, who has been of not a little service in determining and classifying the avian fauna of Colorado. My new-found friend (the feathered one, I mean) was the American pipit, which some years ago was known as the tit-lark.
"Te-cheer! te-cheer! te-cheer!" (accent strong on the second syllable) the birds exclaimed in half-petulant remonstrance at my intrusion as I hobbled about over the rocks. Presently one of them darted up into the air; up, up, up, he swung in a series of oblique leaps and circles, this way and that, until he became a mere speck in the sky, and then disappeared from sight in the cerulean depths beyond. All the while I could hear his emphatic and rapidly repeated call, "Te-cheer! te-cheer!" sifting down out of the blue canopy. How long he remained aloft in "his watch-tower in the skies" I do not know, for one cannot well count minutes in such exciting circumstances, but it seemed a long time. By and by the call appeared to be coming nearer, and the little aeronaut swept down with a swiftness that made my blood tingle, and alighted on a rock as lightly as a snowflake. Afterwards a number of other pipits performed the same aerial exploit. It was wonderful to see them rise several hundred feet into the rarefied atmosphere over an abyss so deep that it has been named the "Bottomless Pit."
The pipits frequently flitted from rock to rock, teetering their slender bodies like sandpipers, and chirping their disapproval of my presence. They furnished some evidence of having begun the work of nest construction, although no nests were found, as it was doubtless still too early in the season. In some respects the pipits are extremely interesting, for, while many of them breed in remote northern latitudes, others select the loftiest summits of the Rockies for summer homes, where they rear their broods and scour the alpine heights in search of food. The following interesting facts relative to them in this alpine country are gleaned from Professor Cooke's pamphlet on "The Birds of Colorado":
In migration they are common throughout the State, but breed only on the loftiest mountains. They arrive on the plains from the South about the last of April, tarry for nearly a month, then hie to the upper mountain parks, stopping there to spend the month of May. By the first of June they have ascended above timber-line to their summer home amid the treeless slopes and acclivities. Laying begins early in July, as soon as the first grass is started. Most of the nests are to be found at an elevation of twelve thousand to thirteen thousand feet, the lowest known being one on Mount Audubon, discovered on the third of July with fresh eggs. During the breeding season these birds never descend below timber-line. The young birds having left the nest, in August both old and young gather in flocks and range over the bald mountain peaks in quest of such dainties as are to the pipit taste. Some of them remain above timber-line until October although most of them have by that time gone down into the upper parks of the mountains. During this month they descend to the plains, and in November return to their winter residence in the South.