It was now far past noon, and beginning to feel weak with hunger, I reluctantly said adieu to the junco and her brood, and hurried on to the Halfway House, where a luncheon of sandwiches, pie and coffee strengthened me for the remainder of my tramp down the mountain to Manitou. That was a walk which lingers like a Greek legend in my memory on account of--well, that is the story that remains to be told. On a former visit to the Halfway House I was mentally knocked off my feet by several glimpses of a woodpecker which was entirely new to me, and of whose existence I was not even aware until this gorgeous gentleman hove in sight. He was the handsomest member of the _Picidæ_ family I have ever seen--his upper parts glossy black, some portions showing a bluish iridescence; his belly rich sulphur yellow, a bright red median stripe on the throat, set in the midst of the black, looking like a small necktie; two white stripes running along the side of the head, and a large white patch covering the middle and greater wing-coverts. Altogether, an odd livery for a woodpecker. Silently he swung from bole to bole for a few minutes, and then disappeared. Not until I reached my room in Manitou could I fix the bird's place in the avicular system. By consulting Coues's _Key_ and Professor Cooke's brochure on the _Birds of Colorado_, I found this quaintly costumed woodpecker to be Williamson's sapsucker (_Sphyrapicus thyroideus_), known only in the western part of the United States from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast. I now lingered in the beautiful pine grove surrounding the Halfway House, hoping to see him again, but he did not appear, and I reluctantly started down the cog-wheel track. As I was turning a bend in the road, I caught sight of a mountain chickadee flitting to a dead snag on the slope at the right, the next moment slipping into a small hole leading inside. I climbed up to the shelf, a small level nook among the tall pines on the mountain side, to inspect her retreat, for it was the first nest of this interesting species that I found. The chickadee flashed in and out of the orifice, carrying food to her little ones, surreptitiously executing her housewifely duties. The mountain tit seems to be a shy and quiet little body when compared with the common black-cap known in the East.