-birds range all
over the region. The robins and siskins make some of their most
thrilling plunges over such cliffs as are shown in the picture._

[Illustration]

The reader will perhaps recall that a flock of pine siskins were seen,
two years prior, in a patch of pine scrub a short distance below
Leadville, at which time I was uncertain as to their identity. Oddly
enough, that was the only time I saw these birds in my first trip to
Colorado, but here in the Georgetown region, only seventy-five or a
hundred miles farther north, no species were more plentiful than they.

The siskins try to sing--I say "try" advisedly. It is one of the oddest
bits of bird vocalization you ever heard, a wheezy little tune in the
ascending scale--a kind of crescendo--which sounds as if it were
produced by inhalation rather than exhalation. It is as labored as the
alto strain of the clay-colored sparrow of the Kansas and Nebraska
prairies, although it runs somewhat higher on the staff. The siskins
seen at Georgetown moved about in good-sized flocks, feeding awhile on
weed-seeds on the sunny slopes, and then wheeling with a merry chirp up
to the pine-clad sides of the mountains. As they were still in the
gregarious frame at Georgetown, I concluded that they had not yet begun
to mate and build their nests in that locality. Afterwards I paid not a
little attention to them farther up in the mountains, and saw several
feeding their young, but, as their nests are built high in the pines,
they are very difficult to find, or, if found, to examine. Our birdlets
have superb powers of flight, and actually seem to revel in hurling
themselves down a precipice or across a chasm with a recklessness that
makes the observer's blood run cold. Sometimes they will dart out in the
air from a steep mountain side, sing a ditty much like the goldfinch's,
then circle back to their native pines on the dizzy cliff.

I must be getting back to my first ramble below Georgetown. Lured by the
lyrics of the green-tailed towhee, I climbed the western acclivity a few
hundred feet, but found that few birds choose such dry and eerie places
for a habitat. Indeed, this was generally my experience in rambling
among the mountains; the farther up the arid steeps, the fewer the
birds. If you will follow a mountain brook up a sunny slope or open
valley, you will be likely to find many birds; but wander away from the
water courses, and you will look for them, oftentimes, in vain. Th