UP AND DOWN THE HEIGHTS 25 



East, and so are the flycatchers, the grosbeaks, the 

 orioles, the tanagers, the humming-birds, and many of 

 the sparrows. Instead of the purple and bronzed grackles 

 (the latter are sometimes seen on the plains of Colorado, 

 but are not common), the Rockies boast of Brewer's 

 blackbird, whose habits are not as prosaic as his name 

 would indicate. " Jim Crow " shuns the mountains for 

 reasons satisfactory to himself; not so the magpie, the 

 raven, and that mischief-maker, Clark's nutcracker. 

 All of which keeps the bird-lover from the East in an 

 ecstasy of surprises until he has become accustomed to 

 his changed environment. 



One cannot help falling into the speculative mood in 

 view of the sharp contrasts between the birds of the 

 East and those of the West. Why does the hardy and 

 almost ubiquitous blue jay studiously avoid the western 

 plains and mountains? Why do not the magpie and 

 the long-crested jay come east ? What is there that 

 prevents the indigo-bird from taking up residence in 

 Colorado, where his pretty western cousin, the lazuli 

 finch, finds himself so much at home? Why is the 

 yellow-shafted flicker of the East replaced in the AVest 

 by the red-shafted flicker ? These questions are more 

 easily asked than answered. From the writer's present 

 home in eastern Kansas it is only six hundred miles 

 to the foot of the Rockies ; yet the avi-fauna of 

 eastern Kansas is much more like that of the Eastern 



