Of all the birds on the Rockies, the one most marvelously eloquent is the solitaire. I have often felt that everything stood still and that every beast and bird listened while the matchless solitaire sang. The hermit thrush seems to suppress one, to give one a touch of reflective loneliness; but the solitaire stirs one to be up and doing, gives one the spirit of youth. In the solitaire's song one feels all the freshness and the promise of spring. The song seems to be born of ages of freedom beneath peaceful skies, of the rhythm of the universe, of a mingling of the melody of winds and waters and of all rhythmic sounds that murmur and echo out of doors and of every song that Nature sings in the wild gardens of the world. I am sure I have never been more thoroughly wide awake and hopeful than when listening to the solitaire's song. The world is flushed with a diviner atmosphere, every object carries a fresher significance, there are new thoughts and clear, calm hopes sure to be realized on the enchanted fields of the future. I was camping alone one evening in the deep solitude of the Rockies. The slanting sun-rays were glowing on St. Vrain's crag-crowned hills and everything was at peace, when, from a near-by treetop came the triumphant, hopeful song of a solitaire, and I forgot all except that the world was young. One believes in fairies when the solitaire sings. Some of my friends have predicted that I shall some time meet with an accident and perish in the solitudes alone. If their prediction should come true, I shall hope it will be in the summer-time, while the flowers are at their best, and that during my last conscious moments I shall hear the melody of the solitaire singing as I die with the dying day. I sat for hours in the woods one day, watching a pair of chickadees feeding their young ones. There were nine of these hungry midgets, and, like nine small boys, they not only were always hungry, but were capable of digesting everything. They ate spiders and flies, green worms, ants, millers, dirty brown worms, insect-eggs by the dozen, devil's-darning-needles, woodlice, bits of lichen, grasshoppers, and I know not how many other things. I could not help thinking that when one family of birds destroyed such numbers of injurious insects, if all the birds were to stop eating, the insects would soon destroy every green tree and plant on earth. One of the places where I used to camp to enjoy the flowers, the trees, and the birds was on the shore of a glacier lake. Near the lake were eternal snows, rugged gorges, and forests primeval. To its shore, especially in autumn, came many bird callers. I often screened myself in a dense clump of fir trees on the north shore to study the manners of birds which came near. To help attract and detain them, I scattered feed on the shore, and I spent interesting hours and days in my hiding-place enjoying the etiquette of birds at feast and frolic.