witness it.

[Illustration: "_Pike's Peak in cloudland_"]

OVER THE DIVIDE AND BACK

One June day a Denver & Rio Grande train bore the bird-lover from
Colorado Springs to Pueblo, thence westward to the mountains, up the
Grand Canyon of the Arkansas River, through the Royal Gorge, past the
smiling, sunshiny upper mountain valleys, over the Divide at Tennessee
Pass, and then down the western slopes to the next stopping-place, which
was Red Cliff, a village nestling in a deep mountain ravine at the
junction of Eagle River and Turkey Creek. The following day, a little
after "peep o' dawn," I was out on the street, and was impressed by a
song coming from the trees on the acclivity above the village. "Surely
that is a new song," I said to myself; "and yet it seems to have a
familiar air." A few minutes of hard climbing brought me near enough to
get my glass on the little lyrist, and then I found it was only the
house-wren! "How could you be led astray by so familiar a song?" you
inquire. Well, that is the humiliating part of the incident, for I have
been listening to the house-wren's gurgling sonata for some twenty
years--rather more than less--and should have recognized it at once;
only it must be remembered that I was in a strange place, and had my
ears and eyes set for avian rarities, and therefore blundered.[5]

[5] On this incident I quote a personal note from my friend, Mr.
Aiken: "The wren of the Rockies is the western house-wren, but is
the same form as that found in the Mississippi Valley. It is quite
possible that a difference in song may occur, but I have not noticed
any."

[Illustration: _Cliff-Swallows_

"_On the rugged face of a cliff_"]

To my surprise, I found many birds on those steep mountain sides, which
were quite well timbered. Above the village a colony of cliff-swallows
had a nesting place on the rugged face of a cliff, and were soaring
about catching insects and attending to the wants of their greedy young.

Besides the species named, I here found warbling vireos, broad-tailed
humming-birds, western nighthawks, ruby-crowned kinglets, magpies,
summer warblers, mountain chickadees, western wood-pewees, Louisiana
tanagers, long-crested jays, kingfishers, gray-headed juncos,
red-shafted flickers, pygmy nuthatches, house-finches, mountain jays,
and Clarke's nutcrackers. The only species noted here that had not
previously been seen east of the Divide was the pygmy nuthatc