270 BIRDS OF THE ROCKIES 



if he had not performed an extraordinary feat. This 

 was certainly skylarking in a most literal sense. With 

 the exception of a similar exhibition by Townsend's soli- 

 taire — to be described in the closing chapter — up in 

 the neighborhood of Gray\s Peak, it was the most won- 

 derful avian aeronautic exploit, accompanied with song, 

 of which I have ever been wdtness. It is odd, too, that 

 a bird which is so much of a groundling — I use the 

 term in a good sense, of course — should also be so 

 expert a sky-scraper. I had listened to the sky song of 

 the desert horned lark out on the plain, but there he 

 did not hover long in the air. 



The killdeer plovers are as noisy in the park as they 

 are in an eastern pasture-field, and almost as plentiful. 

 In the evening near the village a pair of western robins 

 and a thieving magpie had a hard tussle along the fence 

 of the road. The freebooter was carrying something in 

 his beak which looked sadly like a callow nestling. He 

 tried to hide in the fence-corners, to give himself a 

 chance to eat his morsel, but they were hot on his trail, 

 and at length he flew off toward the distant ridge. 

 Where did the robins build their nests 't I saw no trees 

 in the neighborhood, but no doubt they built their adobe 

 huts on a fence-rail or in a nook about an old building. 

 Not a Say's phoebe had we thus far seen on this jaunt 

 to the mountains, but here was a family near the vil- 

 lage, and, sure enough, they were w^histling their likely 



