ow not how many white-crowned sparrows,--several dozen,
perhaps,--it would have done the heart of any lover of avian minstrelsy
good to listen to. The whole valley seemed to be transfigured by their
roundelays, which have about them such an air of poetry and old-world
romance. During the morning I was so fortunate as to find a nest, the
first of this species that I had ever discovered. Providence had never
before cast my lot with these birds in their breeding haunts. The nest
was a pretty structure placed on the ground, beneath a bush amid the
green grass, its holdings consisting of four dainty, pale-blue eggs,
speckled with brown. The female leaped from her seat as I passed near,
and in that act divulged her little family secret. Although she chirped
uneasily as I bent over her treasures, she had all her solicitude for
nothing; the last thing I would think of doing would be to mar her
maternal prospects. As has been said, in this valley these handsome
sparrows were quite plentiful; but when, toward evening, I clambered
over a ridge, and descended into the valley of Moraine Lake, several
hundred feet lower than the Seven Lakes valley, what was my surprise to
find not a white-crown there! The next day I trudged up to the Seven
Lakes, and found the white-crowns quite abundant in the copses, as they
had been farther up the hollow on the previous day; and, besides, in a
boggy place about two miles below Moraine Lake there were several pairs,
and I was fortunate enough to find a nest. Strange--was it not?--that
these birds should avoid the copsy swamps near Moraine Lake, and yet
select for breeding homes the valleys both above and below it. Perhaps
the valley of Moraine Lake is a little too secluded and shut in by the
towering mountains on three sides, the other places being more open and
sunshiny.

The upper valley was the summer home of that musician _par excellence_
of the Rockies, the green-tailed towhee, and he sang most divinely,
pouring out his

"full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."

Having elsewhere described his minstrelsy and habits with more or less
fulness, I need give him only this passing reference here. A little bird
with which I here first made acquaintance was an elegant species known
as Audubon's warbler, which may be regarded as the western
representative of the myrtle warbler of the East. The two birds are
almost counterparts. Indeed, at first I mis