to find it. The little husband helps to lead you
astray. He will leap upon a rock and send forth his bell-like peal, as
if he were saying, "Right here, right here, here is our nest!" but when
you go to the spot, he flits off to another rock and sounds the same
challenge. And so you can form no idea of the nest site. My nearest
approach to finding a nest was among the rocks and cliffs on the summit
of a mountain a few miles from Golden, where an adult bird was seen to
feed a youngster that had already flown from the nursery. It was
interesting to know that the rock wrens breed at so high an altitude.
However, they are not an alpine species, none having been seen by the
writer over eight thousand feet above sea-level, although they have been
known to ascend to an altitude of twelve thousand feet.

The fourth member of our feathered quartette was the oddest of all. On
the thirtieth of June my companion and I were riding slowly down the
mountain side a few miles below Gray's Peak, which we had scaled two
days before. My ear was struck by a flicker's call above us, so I
dismounted from my burro, and began to clamber up the hillside.
Presently I heard a song that seemed one moment to be near at hand, the
next far away, now to the right, now to the left, and anon directly
above me. To my ear it was a new kind of bird minstrelsy. I climbed
higher and higher, and yet the song seemed to be no nearer. It had a
grosbeak-like quality, I fancied, and I hoped to find either the pine
or the evening grosbeak, for both of which I had been making anxious
search. The shifting of the song from point to point struck me as odd,
and it was very mystifying.

Higher and higher I climbed, the mountain side being so steep that my
breath came in gasps, and I was often compelled to throw myself on the
ground to recover strength. At length a bird darted out from the pines
several hundred feet above me, rose high into the air, circled and swung
this way and that for a long time, breaking at intervals into a song
which sifted down to me faintly through the blue distance. How long it
remained on the wing I do not know, but it was too long for my eyes to
endure the strain of watching it. Through my glass a large part of the
wings showed white or yellowish-white, and seemed to be almost
translucent in the blaze of the sunlight. What could this wonderful
haunter of the sky be? It was scarcely possible that so roly-poly a bird
as a grosbeak could perform s