and
among the foothills, mesas, and lower mountains, we now proposed to go
up among the mountains that were mountains in good earnest, and see what
we could find.

The village of Georgetown nestles in a deep pocket of the mountains. The
valley is quite narrow, and on three sides, save where the two branches
of Clear Creek have hewn out their canyons, the ridges rise at a sharp
angle to a towering height, while here and there a white-cap peeps out
through the depressions. Those parts of the narrow vale that are
irrigated by the creek and its numerous tiny tributaries are beautiful
in their garb of green, while the areas that are not thus refreshed are
as gray as the arid portions of the plains themselves. And that is the
case everywhere among the Rockies--where no water flows over the
surface the porous, sandy soil is dry and parched. The altitude of
Georgetown is eight thousand four hundred and seventy-six feet. We were
therefore three thousand feet higher than we had been in the morning,
and had a right to expect a somewhat different avi-fauna, an expectation
in which we were not disappointed.

Our initial ramble took us down the valley. The first bird noted was a
familiar one--the warbling vireo, which is very abundant in Colorado in
its favorite localities, where all day you may be lulled by its "silvery
converse, just begun and never ended." No description of a bird so well
known in both the East and the West is required, but the one seen that
day gave a new performance, which seems to be worthy of more than a
passing notice. Have other bird students observed it? The bird was first
seen flitting about in the trees bordering the street; then it flew to
its little pendent nest in the twigs. I turned my glass upon it, and,
behold, there it sat in its tiny hammock singing its mercurial tune at
the top of its voice. It continued its solo during the few minutes I
stopped to watch it, glancing over the rim of its nest at its auditor
with a pert gleam in its twinkling eyes. That was the first and only
time I have ever seen a bird indulging its lyrical whim while it sat on
its nest. Whether the bird was a male or a female I could not determine,
but, whatever its sex, its little bosom was bubbling over with
music.[11]

[11] After the foregoing was written, I chanced upon the following
note in "Bird Lore" for September and October, 1901, written by a
lady at Moline, Illinois, who had made an early morning visit