140 BIRDS OF THE ROCKIES 



In no place, in all my tramping among the Rockies, 

 did I find so many birds in an equal area. 



In the green, irrigated meadow bordering one side of 

 the sheet of water, I was pleased to find a number of 

 Brewers blackbirds busily gathering food in the wet 

 grass for their young. And who or what are Brewer's 

 blackbirds ? In the East, the purple and bronzed 

 grackles, or crow blackbirds, are found in great abun- 

 dance ; but in Colorado these birds are replaced by Brewer's 

 blackbirds, which closely resemble their eastern kinsfolk, 

 athough not quite so large. The iridescence of the 

 plumage is somewhat different in the two species, but 

 in both the golden eyeballs show white at a distance. 

 When I first saw a couple of Brewer's blackbirds stalking 

 featly about on a lawn at Manitou, digging worms and 

 grubs out of the sod, I simply put them down in my 

 notebook as bronzed or purple grackles — an error that 

 had to be corrected afterwards, on more careful exami- 

 nation. The mistake shows how close is the resemblance 

 between the two species. 



The Brewer division of the family breed on the plains 

 and in the mountains, to an altitude of ten thousand 

 feet, always selecting marshy places for their early sum- 

 mer home ; then in August and September, the breeding 

 season over, large flocks of old and young ascend to the 

 regions above the timber-line, about thirteen thou- 

 sand feet above sea-level, where they swarm over the 



