202 BIRDS OF THE ROCKIES 



in motion, the golden ornamentation gave them a filmy 

 appearance. On the wing, the birds, as I afterwards 

 observed, often chirped a little lay that bore a close 

 resemblance in certain parts to the " pe-chick-o-pe " of 

 the American goldfinch. Indeed, a number of their 

 notes suggested that bird, as did also their manner of 

 flight, which was quite undulatory. The birds were the 

 pine siskins. They are very common in the Rockies, 

 ranging from an elevation of eight thousand feet to the 

 timber-line. This pert and dainty little bird is the 

 same wherever found in North America, having no 

 need of the cognomen " western " prefixed to his name 

 when he takes it into his wise little head to make his 

 abode in the Rocky Mountains. 



The reader will perhaps recall that a flock of pine 

 siskins were seen, two years prior, in a patch of pine 

 scrub a short distance below Leadville, at which time 

 I was uncertain as to their identity. Oddly enough, 

 that was the only time I saw these birds in my first 

 trip to Colorado, but here in the Georgetown region, 

 only seventy-five or a hundred miles farther north, no 

 species were more plentiful than they. 



The siskins try to sing — I say " try " advisedly. It 

 is one of the oddest bits of bird vocalization you ever 

 heard, a wheezy little tune in the ascending scale — 

 a kind of cx-escendo — which sounds as if it were pro- 

 duced by inhalation rather than exhalation. It is as 



