OVER THE DIVIDE AM) BACK 119 



night-hawks, ruby-crowned kinglets, magpies, summer 

 warblers, mountain chickadees, western wood-pewees, 

 Louisiana tanagers, long-crested jays, kingfishers, gray- 

 headed j uncos, redshafted flickers, pygmy nuthatches, 

 house-finches, mountain jays, and Clarke's nutcrackers. 

 The only species noted here that had not previously 

 been seen east of the Divide was the pvgmy nuthatch, 

 a little bird which scales the trunks and branches of 

 trees like all his family, but which is restricted to the 

 Rocky Mountains. Like the white-breasted nuthatch, 

 he utters an alto call, " Yang ! yang ! vang ! " only it 

 is soft and low — a miniature edition of the call of its 

 eastern relative. 



A mountain chickadee's nest was also found, and 

 here I heard for the first time one of these birds sins. 

 Its performance was quite an affecting little minor 

 whistle, usually composed of four distinct notes, though 

 sometimes the vocalist contented himself with a sons: 



o 



of two or three syllables. The ordinary run might be 

 represented phonetically in this way, " Phee, ph-e-e-e, 

 phe-phe," with the chief emphasis on the second syllable, 

 which is considerably prolonged. The song is quite 

 different from that of the black-capped chickadee 

 both in the intoning and the technical arrangement, 

 while it does not run so high in the scale, nor does 

 it impress me as being quite so much of a minor strain, 

 if such a distinction can be made in music. Both 



