leading out this way"--indicating the direction--"until you come to a
red gate. The lake is private property, but you can go right in, as you
don't shoot. No one will drive you out. I think you will find it an
interesting place for bird study."

[Illustration: _Brewer's Blackbirds_

"_An interesting place for bird study_"]

The foregoing is what my landlord told me one morning at Buena Vista.
Nor did I waste time in finding the way to the lake, a small sheet of
water, as clear as crystal, embowered in the lovely park lying between
towering, snow-clad mountains. One might almost call the spot a bird's
Arcadia. In no place, in all my tramping among the Rockies, did I find
so many birds in an equal area.

In the green, irrigated meadow bordering one side of the sheet of water,
I was pleased to find a number of Brewer's blackbirds busily gathering
food in the wet grass for their young. And who or what are Brewer's
blackbirds? In the East, the purple and bronzed grackles, or crow
blackbirds, are found in great abundance; but in Colorado these birds
are replaced by Brewer's blackbirds, which closely resemble their
eastern kinsfolk, although not quite so large. The iridescence of the
plumage is somewhat different in the two species, but in both the golden
eye-balls show white at a distance. When I first saw a couple of
Brewer's blackbirds stalking featly about on a lawn at Manitou, digging
worms and grubs out of the sod, I simply put them down in my note-book
as bronzed or purple grackles--an error that had to be corrected
afterwards, on more careful examination. The mistake shows how close is
the resemblance between the two species.

The Brewer division of the family breed on the plains and in the
mountains, to an altitude of ten thousand feet, always selecting marshy
places for their early summer home; then in August and September, the
breeding season over, large flocks of old and young ascend to the
regions above the timber-line, about thirteen thousand feet above
sea-level, where they swarm over the grassy but treeless mountain sides
in search of food. In October they retire to the plains, in advance of
the austere weather of the great altitudes, and soon the majority of
them hie to a blander climate than Colorado affords in winter.

Still more interesting to me was the large colony of yellow-headed
blackbirds that had taken up their residence in the rushes and flags of
the upper end of the lake. These birds are not