lled a serenade in the copses.

Toward evening I clambered down to the cottage by Moraine Lake. The next
morning, in addition to the birds already observed in the valley, I
listened to the theme-like recitative of a warbling vireo, and also
watched a sandpiper teetering about the edge of the water, while a
red-shafted flicker dashed across the lake to a pine tree on the
opposite side. As I left this attractive valley, the hermit thrushes
seemed to waft me a sad farewell.

A little over half a day was spent in walking down from Moraine Lake to
the Halfway House. It was a saunter that shall never be forgotten, for I
gathered a half day's tribute of lore from the birds. A narrow green
hollow, wedging itself into one of the gorges of the towering Peak, and
watered by a snow-fed mountain brook, proved a very paradise for birds.
Here was that queer little midget of the Rockies, the broad-tailed
humming-bird, which performs such wonderful feats of balancing in the
air; the red-shafted flicker; the western robin, singing precisely like
his eastern half-brother; a pair of house-wrens guarding their
treasures; Lincoln's sparrows, not quite so shy as those at Moraine
Lake; mountain chickadees; olive-sided flycatchers; on the pine-clad
mountain sides the lyrical hermit thrushes; and finally those
ballad-singers of the mountain vales, the white-crowned sparrows, one of
whose nests I was so fortunate as to come upon. It was placed in a small
pine bush, and was just in process of construction. One of the birds
flew fiercely at a mischievous chipmunk, and drove him away, as if he
knew him for an arrant nest-robber.

Leaving this enchanting spot, I trudged down the mountain valleys and
ravines, holding silent converse everywhere with the birds, and at
length reached a small park, green and bushy, a short distance above the
Halfway House. While jogging along, my eye caught sight of a gray-headed
junco, which flitted from a clump of bushes bordering the stream to a
spot on the ground close to some shrubs. The act appeared so suggestive
that I decided to reconnoitre. I walked cautiously to the spot where the
bird had dropped down, and in a moment she flew up with a scolding
chipper. There was the nest, set on the ground in the grass and cosily
hidden beneath the over-arching branches of a low bush. Had the mother
bird been wise and courageous enough to retain her place, her secret
would not have been betrayed, the nest was so well concea