nt the
June that followed the journey described in the last chapter,--

"Dreaming sweet, idle dreams of having strayed
To Arcady with all its golden lore."

The birds, of course, were my first concern. Ask of almost any resident
not an ornithologist if there are birds in Colorado, and he will shake
his head.

"Not many, I think," he will probably say. "Camp birds and magpies. Oh
yes, and larks. I think that's about all."

This opinion, oft repeated, did not settle the matter in my mind, for I
long ago discovered that none are so ignorant of the birds and flowers
of a neighborhood as most of the people who live among them. I sought
out my post, and I looked for myself.

There are birds in the State, plenty of them, but they are not on
exhibition like the mountains and their wonders. No driver knows the way
to their haunts, and no guide-book points them out. Even a bird student
may travel a day's journey, and not encounter so many as one shall see
in a small orchard in New England. He may rise with the dawn, and hear
nothing like the glorious morning chorus that stirs one in the Atlantic
States. He may search the trees and shrubberies for long June days, and
not find so many nests as will cluster about one cottage at home.

Yet the birds are here, but they are shy, and they possess the true
Colorado spirit,--they are mountain-worshipers. As the time approaches
when each bird leaves society and retires for a season to the bosom of
its own family, many of the feathered residents of the State bethink
them of their inaccessible canyons. The saucy jay abandons the
settlements where he has been so familiar as to dispute with the dogs
for their food, and sets up his homestead in a tall pine-tree on a slope
which to look at is to grow dizzy; the magpie, boldest of birds, steals
away to some secure retreat; the meadow-lark makes her nest in the
monotonous mesa, where it is as well hidden as a bobolink's nest in a
New England meadow.

The difficulties in the way of studying Colorado birds are several,
aside from their excessive suspicion of every human being. In the first
place, observations must be made before ten o'clock, for at that hour
every day a lively breeze, which often amounts to a gale, springs up,
and sets the cottonwood and aspen leaves in a flutter that hides the
movements of any bird. Then, all through the most interesting month of
June the cottonwood-trees are shedding their cotton, and to a person on
the