of _Dendroica coronata_ is pure white. Then, too, the myrtle
warbler is only a migrant in Colorado, passing farther north to breed.
Audubon's, it must be said, has extremely rich habiliments, his upper
parts being bluish-ash, streaked with black, his belly and under
tail-coverts white, and his breast in high feather, black, prettily
skirted with gray or invaded with white from below; but his yellow
spots, set like gleaming gold in various parts of his plumage,
constitute his most marked embellishment, being found on the crown,
rump, throat, and each side of the chest.

On my first excursion to some meadows and wooded low-grounds south of
Colorado Springs, while listening to a concert given by western
meadow-larks, my attention was attracted to a large, black bird circling
about the fields and then alighting on a fence-post. My first thought
was: "It is only a crow blackbird." But on second thought I decided that
the crow blackbird did not soar and circle about in this manner. At all
events, there seemed to be something slightly peculiar about this bird's
behavior, so I went nearer to inspect him, when he left his perch on the
post, flapped around over the meadow, and finally flew to a large,
partially decayed cottonwood tree in a pasture field. If I could believe
my eyes, he clung to the upright stems of the branches after the style
of a woodpecker! That was queer indeed--a woodpecker that looked
precisely like a blackbird! Such a featherland oddity was certainly
foreign to any of my calculations; for, it must be remembered, this was
prior to my making acquaintance with Williamson's sapsucker.

Closer inspection proved that this bird was actually hitching up and
down the branches of the tree in the regular woodpecker fashion.
Presently he slipped into a hole in a large limb, and the loud, eager
chirping of young birds was heard. It was not long before his mate
appeared, entered the cavity, and fed the clamorous brood. The birds
proved to be Lewis's woodpeckers, another distinctly western type. My
field-glass soon clearly brought out their peculiar markings.

A beautiful bird-skin, bought of Mr. Charles E. Aiken, now lies on my
desk and enables me to describe the fine habiliments of this kind from
an actual specimen. His upper parts are glossy black, the sheen on the
back being greenish, and that on the wings and tail bluish or purplish,
according to the angle of the sun's light; a white collar prettily
encircles the