urnish a sample of their lyrical gifts on so calm and
sweet a summer day in the season of courtship.

What billsome morsels did they find on the snow? We examined their
white tablecloth and found a number of small beetles and other insects
creeping up through it or crawling around over its surface. Thus
Nature spreads her banquet everywhere for her feathered children.

One cannot help falling into the speculative mood as one reflects on
these little birds and their remarkable habits. Why do they, of all
birds, choose the highest mountain peaks for their summer homes? Might
the cause be physiological? Are their lungs, muscles, and nervous
systems so constructed as to be adapted to a dry, rare, crisp
atmosphere, which would prove injurious, perhaps fatal, to birds of a
different structural organization? Who can tell? At all events, they
live on these towering elevations all summer long, woo their
plainly-clad mates, build their nests, and rear their happy families.

Their nests are set amid the rocks, and are quite bulky, the walls
composed of grasses and the lining consisting of soft feathers. In
order to procure the grasses required, they must descend at least to
the belt of scant vegetation just below the region of bare rocks and
boulders. Where they get the downy feathers for the carpet of their
nurseries I have not been able to ascertain. No nest has yet been
discovered below an elevation of 12,000 feet. Our little bird may,
indeed, be called a "haunter of the sky." The height of the breeding
season is in the latter part of July. The broods having left the
nests, old and young gather in small flocks and range over the peaks
and ridges, feeding on the insects to be found on the fields of snow.

No less interesting are the habits of these birds in winter. In
October and November most of them descend only to the timber line,
where they remain throughout the winter, save as they are driven down
into the denser forests by the fierce tempests of this arctic region.
What feathered Vikings they are! They do not even make for themselves
snow huts for protection from the winter storms. However, a few
descend almost to the base of the foothills, while others--perhaps the
less hardy--seek a blander climate in the northern part of Mexico.

There are in North America four other species of the genus Leucosticte;
the Aleutian, whose habitat is the Aleutian and Prybilof islands and
east as far as the island of Kad