Birds of the RockiesKeyser, Leander S. (Leander Sylvester)
History
Birds of the Rockies
Keyser, Leander S. (Leander Sylvester)
Birds; Birds -- Colorado
While some species were, so to speak, our "companions in travel" the
entire distance from the town to the lake, and others went with us only
a part of the way, still other species found habitats only in the higher
regions clambering far up toward the timber-line. Among these were the
mountain jays, none of which were found as far down the range as
Georgetown. They began to proclaim their presence by raucous calls as
soon as we arrived in the vicinity of Green Lake. A family of them were
hurtling about in the pine woods, allowing themselves to be inspected at
short range, and filling the hollows with their uncanny calls. What a
voice the mountain jay has! Nature did a queer thing when she put a
"horse-fiddle" into the larynx of this bird--but it is not ours to ask
the reason why, simply to study her as she is. In marked contrast with
the harsh calls of these mountain hobos were the roulades of the sweet
and musical ruby-crowned kinglets, which had absented themselves from
the lower altitudes, but were abundant in the timber belts about ten
thousand feet up the range and still higher.
[Illustration: _Red-naped Sapsuckers_
"_Chiselling grubs out of the bark_"]
On the border of the lake, among some gnarly pines, I stumbled upon a
woodpecker that was entirely new to my eastern eyes--one that I had not
seen in my previous touring among the heights of the Rockies. He was
sedulously pursuing his vocation--a divine call, no doubt--of chiselling
grubs out of the bark of the pine trees, making the chips fly, and
producing at intervals that musical snare-drumming which always sets
the poet to dreaming of sylvan solitudes. What was the bird? The
red-naped sapsucker, a beautifully habited Chesterfield in plumes. He
presently ambled up the steep mountain side, and buried himself in the
pine forest, and I saw him no more, and none of his kith.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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