A Bird-Lover in the West. Olive Thorne Miller

III.

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AN UPROAR OF SONG.

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      The bird music of Colorado, though not so abundant as one could wish, is singularly rich in quality, and remarkable for its volume. At the threshold of the State the traveler is struck by this peculiarity. As the train thunders by, the Western meadow-lark mounts a telegraph pole and pours out such a peal of melody that it is distinctly heard above the uproar of the iron wheels.

      This bird is preëminently the bird of the mesa, or high table-land of the region, and only to hear his rare song is well worth a journey to that distant wonderland. Not of his music could Lucy Larcom say, as she so happily does of our bird of the meadow—

      "Sounds the meadow-lark's refrain

       Just as sad and clear."

      Nor could his sonorous song be characterized by Clinton Scollard's exquisite verse—

      "From whispering winds your plaintive notes were drawn."

      For the brilliant solo of Colorado's bird is not in the least like the charming minor chant of our Eastern lark. So powerful that it is heard at great distances in the clear air, it is still not in the slightest degree strained or harsh, but is sweet and rich, whether it be close at one's side in the silence, or shouted from the housetop in the tumult of a busy street. It has, moreover, the same tender winsomeness that charms us in our own lark song; something that fills the sympathetic listener with delight, that satisfies his whole being; a siren strain that he longs to listen to forever. The whole breadth and grandeur of the great West is in this song, its freedom, its wildness, the height of its mountains, the sweep of its rivers, the beauty of its flowers—all in the wonderful performance. Even after months of absence, the bare memory of the song of the mesa will move its lover to an almost painful yearning. Of him, indeed, Shelley might truthfully say—

      "Better than all measures

       Of delightful sound,

       Better than all treasures

       That in books are found,

       Thy skill to poet were,

       Thou scorner of the ground."

      Nor is the variety of the lark song less noteworthy than its quality. That each bird has a large répertoire I cannot assert, for my opportunities for study have been too limited; but it is affirmed by those who know him better, that he has, and I fully believe it.

      One thing is certainly true of nearly if not quite all of our native birds, that no two sing exactly alike, and the close observer soon learns to distinguish between the robins and the song-sparrows of a neighborhood, by their notes alone. The Western lark seems even more than others to individualize his utterances, so that constant surprises reward the discriminating listener. During two months' bird-study in that delightful cañon-hidden grove at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain, one particular bird song was for weeks an unsolved mystery. The strain consisted of three notes in loud, ringing tones, which syllabled themselves very plainly in my ear as "Whip-for-her."

      This unseemly, and most emphatic, demand came always from a distance, and apparently from the top of some tall tree, and it proved to be most tantalizing; for although the first note invariably brought me out, opera-glass in hand, I was never able to come any nearer to a sight of the unknown than the sway of a twig he had just left.

      One morning, however, before I was up, the puzzling songster visited the little grove under my windows, and I heard his whole song, of which it now appeared the three notes were merely the conclusion. The performance was eccentric. It began with a soft warble, apparently for his sole entertainment, then suddenly, as if overwhelmed by memory of wrongs received or of punishment deserved, he interrupted his tender melody with a loud, incisive "Whip-for-her!" in a totally different manner. His nearness, however, solved the mystery; the ring of the meadow-lark was in his tones, and I knew him at once. I had not suspected his identity, for the Western bird does not take much trouble to keep out of sight, and, moreover, his song is rarely less than six or eight notes in length.

      Another unique singer of the highlands is the horned lark. One morning in June a lively carriage party passing along the mountain side, on a road so bare and bleak that it seemed nothing could live there, was startled by a small gray bird, who suddenly dashed out of the sand beside the wheels, ran across the path, and flew to a fence on the other side. Undisturbed, perhaps even stimulated, by the clatter of two horses and a rattling mountain wagon, undaunted by the laughing and talking load, the little creature at once burst into song, so loud as to be heard above the noisy procession, and so sweet that it silenced every tongue.

      "How exquisite! What is it?" we asked each other, at the end of the little aria.

      "It's the gray sand bird," answered the native driver.

      "Otherwise the horned lark," added the young naturalist, from his broncho behind the carriage.

      Let not his name mislead: this pretty fellow, in soft, gray-tinted plumage, is not deformed by "horns;" it is only two little tufts of feathers, which give a certain piquant, wide-awake expression to his head, that have fastened upon him a title so incongruous. The nest of the desert-lover is a slight depression in the barren earth, nothing more; and the eggs harmonize with their surroundings in color. The whole is concealed by its very openness, and as hard to find, as the bobolink's cradle in the trackless grass of the meadow.

      Most persistent of all the singers of the grove beside the house was the yellow warbler, a dainty bit of featherhood the size of one's thumb. On the Atlantic coast his simple ditty is tender, and so low that it must be listened for; but in that land of "skies so blue they flash," he sings it at the top of his voice, louder than the robin song as we know it, and easily heard above the roar of the wind and the brawling of the brook he haunts.

      Before me at this moment is the nest of one of these little sprites, which I watched till the last dumpy infant had taken flight, and then secured with the branchlet it was built upon. It was in a young oak, not more than twelve feet from the ground, occupying a perpendicular fork, where it was concealed and shaded by no less than sixteen twigs, standing upright, and loaded with leaves. The graceful cup itself, to judge by its looks, might be made of white floss silk—I have no curiosity to know the actual material—and is cushioned inside with downy fibres from the cottonwood-tree. It is dainty enough for a fairy's cradle.

      The wood-pewee, in dress and manners nearly resembling his Eastern brother,

      "The pewee of the loneliest woods,

       Sole singer in the solitudes,"

      has a strange and decidedly original utterance. While much louder and more continuous, it lacks the sweetness of our bird's notes; indeed, it resembles in quality of tone the voice of our phœbe, or his beautiful relative, the great-crested flycatcher. The Westerner has a great deal to say for himself. On alighting, he announces