A BIRD-LOVER IN THE WEST
BY
OLIVE THORNE MILLER
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1900
Copyright, 1894, BY H. M. MILLER.
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._ Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
INTRODUCTORY.
The studies in this volume were all made, as the title indicates, in the West; part of them in Colorado (1891), in Utah (1893), and the remainder (1892) in what I have called "The Middle Country," being Southern Ohio, and West only relatively to New England and New York, where most of my studies have been made.
Several chapters have appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly" and other magazines, and in the "Independent" and "Harper's Bazar," while others are now for the first time published.
OLIVE THORNE MILLER.
CONTENTS.
IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.
PAGE
I. CAMPING IN COLORADO 3
II. IN THE COTTONWOODS 17
Western wood-pewee. _Contopus richardsonii._ Western house wren. _Troglodytes aedon aztecus._ Towhee. _Pipilo erythrophthalmus._
III. AN UPROAR OF SONG 32
Western meadow-lark. _Sturnella magna neglecta._ Horned lark. _Otocoris alpestris leucolaema._ Yellow warbler. _Dendroica aestiva._ Western wood-pewee. _Contopus richardsonii._ Humming-bird. _Trochilus colubris._ Long-tailed chat. _Icteria virens longicauda._
IV. THE TRAGEDY OF A NEST 42
Long-tailed chat. _Icteria virens longicauda._
V. A FEAST OF FLOWERS 52
VI. A CINDERELLA AMONG FLOWERS 60
VII. CLIFF-DWELLERS IN THE CANYON 70
Canyon wren. _Catherpes mexicanus conspersus._ American dipper. _Cinclus mexicanus._
IN THE MIDDLE COUNTRY.
VIII. AT FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING 95
Purple grackle. _Quiscalus quiscula._ Mourning dove. _Zenaidura macroura._ Red-headed woodpecker. _Melanerpes erythrocephalus._ Blue jay. _Cyanocitta cristata._ Cardinal grosbeak. _Cardinalis cardinalis._ American robin. _Merula migratoria._ Golden-wing woodpecker. _Colaptes auratus._ House sparrow. _Passer domesticus._
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: A Bird-Lover in the West by Olive Thorne Miller
- 2: The endless clatter of plate and knife
- 3: But the internal man that needs recreation
- 4: To still further banish home concerns
- 5: And comes tumbling down from the Cheyenne
- 6: Then I have not seen America's Wonderland
- 7: The above mentioned cottonwood grove
- 8: In the midst of the cottonwoods
- 9: Who begins soon after the pewee
- 10: An exceedingly busy and silent wren
- 11: But I was glad to know the chewink
- 12: Familiar as the chewink might be about our quarters
- 13: The ring of the meadow lark was in his tones
- 14: The pewee of the loneliest woods
- 15: A catbird hopped from branch to branch
- 16: There before me was beautiful Cheyenne
- 17: Then the chack of a blackbird
- 18: A nest unseen Somewhere among the million stalks
- 19: For I am convinced that the chat had deserted the nest
- 20: If Colorado is not the paradise of wild flowers
- 21: To the flower lover it is the yucca
- 22: The wonderful golden columbine
- 23: And tiny snips of petals standing out at all angles
- 24: The experienced seeker will find the gilia
- 25: Several peculiarities of Colorado flowers are noteworthy
- 26: And Colorado will be left bare
- 27: They penetrated to the end of the canyon
- 28: Slowly then I walked up the canyon
- 29: Perhaps fifty feet from the ouzel nest
- 30: But little cared baby ouzel for music
- 31: Her movements were jerky and wren like
- 32: The wren seemed to close her wings
- 33: Painfully climbing the next day the burro track to the Grave
- 34: At four o'clock in the morning
- 35: Now a blackbird would fly across the lawn
- 36: They broke the kernels into bits
- 37: Blackbirds were not the only guests at the feast
- 38: Was always the golden winged woodpecker
- 39: With as much ease as a woodpecker
- 40: And then I saw there were three spruce young redbirds
- 41: When the youngsters were alone on the ground
- 42: The nest was made on a big branch of cedar
- 43: And a bobolink meadow on the other
- 44: It was the delight of cardinals and catbirds
- 45: Robins and blue jays united in that work
- 46: However it may strike a looker on
- 47: Jays have no idea of relative values
- 48: And remove the last remnant of nest mussiness
- 49: Robin and blue jay voices in chorus
- 50: Heard the jay babies constantly
- 51: Which bigger collectors invariably do
- 52: When blue jay and catbird babies were rather numerous
- 53: Blue jay babies wandered far off
- 54: Before we reached the barbed fence
- 55: What was certain was that the nest belonged to wrens
- 56: And we heard chatting and churring
- 57: In some crisis in wren affairs
- 58: A wood thrush nest in a low tree
- 59: And I did want to see the wrens
- 60: And began a very loud wren dear r r r
- 61: And a loitering wren is a curiosity
- 62: It was long enough to hear the wren baby cry
- 63: The last and sweetest song of the wren
- 64: The cries suggested the persistence of young orioles
- 65: With nestlings all stirring abroad
- 66: As the song of the female oriole always is
- 67: Was that of the Mourning dove who grieves and grieves
- 68: And vulgar mannered blackbirds
- 69: After the manner of a blackbird
- 70: After this episode in my dove acquaintance
- 71: Cut across by an irrigating ditch or a mountain brook
- 72: And protected and cherished other winged messengers
- 73: Or whether their confidence extended only to plow boys
- 74: Magpie voices were heard from morning till night
- 75: Some seemed to head for the dim Oquirrhs across the lake
- 76: Selecting a favorable looking clump of oak brush
- 77: Screaming magpie of such notes
- 78: Not so observing as the magpies
- 79: This was the Western form of Icteria
- 80: Where I settled myself at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains
- 81: Then chacking like a blackbird
- 82: For he is almost as large as an oriole
- 83: Utah is dominated by Irrigation
- 84: If I had to dam up the irrigator
- 85: Whereupon there followed an angry squawk
- 86: While she hopped nearer and nearer
- 87: The snake was what the man called a bull snake
- 88: I know how a chat's nest looks
- 89: Or the Rocky Mountain bluebird
- 90: The bluebird wears heaven's color
- 91: She always alighted on the peach tree branch
- 92: The morning the lazulis were ten days old
- 93: She always returned to the honeysuckle
- 94: That I might leave Utah altogether
- 95: English or house sparrow as a climber
- 96: Humming bird collecting spiders
- 97: Treatment of cardinal grosbeak