224 THE AMERICAN PIPIT. 



busybodies of tbe place are the Pipits. Females, lisping suspiciously, hurry 

 to and fro, discussing locations, matching straws, playfully rebuking over- 

 bold swains, and hastily gulping insects on the side. The male birds ho\'er 

 about their mates solicitously — never helping, of course — or else sing lustily 

 from prominent knolls and rocks. 



The Pipit song in many of its phases is strikingly like that of the Rock 

 Wren (Salpinctcs ohsoletns). It has the same vivacity and ringing quality, 

 tho perhaps less power, and the similarity extends to the very phrasing. An 

 alarm note runs pichoo pichoo pichoo, given six or seven times, rapidly and 

 emphatically ; while another, woe iich, 7vcc iicli, zvcc iicli, is rendered, unless 

 nn- eyes deceive me, with the same springing motion which characterizes the 

 Wren. An ecstacy song of courting time (heard on Mount Rainier ) runs tiviss 

 izviss tzviss twiss (ad lib.), uttered as rapidly as the syllables may be said. It 

 is delivered as the bird describes great slow circles in mid-air; and when the 

 singer is exhausted by his efforts, he falls like a spent rocket to the ground. 



For all this activity, however, the nests are hard to find. Finally, as w^e 

 keep ascending the ridge, bare save for occasional ]iatches of snow in the 

 hollows. Jack spies an old nest, last year's of course, in tlie recess of a soil 

 tussock, completely overarched by earth. The secret is out, and we can 

 searcl: with more intelligence now. Soon I ilush a female at her task of in- 

 cubation. She has been digging out a pocket, or cave, in a moist bank which 

 the snow had set free not above three days before. The earth removed from 

 the interior is piled up for the lnwer rim, or wall, and a few rootlets, doubt- 

 less those secured in the process of excavation, have been culled out and laid 

 horizontally along the edge of the dirt. The hole is about as large as my 

 double fists, and the nest, when completed, evidently cannot be injured by 

 falling snow. 



In July of the following year, work was carried on in the Upper Horse- 

 shoe Basin, a few miles further north. The song period was evidently past, 

 l)ut a nest of five eggs slightly incubated, was taken from a heather slope on 

 the 20th of the month. The sitting bird flushed from under the beating 

 stick, but only after I had passed. 



On the i7tli, a venturesome climb over the rock-wall which fronts the 

 glacier of the Upper Basin, had yielded only a last year's Leucosticte's nest. 

 As I was nearly down the cliff and breathing easier, a Pipit flew unannounced 

 from a spur of the clifif upon which I was standing to the one beyond. Evi- 

 dentlv she had heard the call of her mate, for the instant she lighted upon the 

 cliff he was near her. But budge not a foot would he : whether he was sus- 

 picious or only exacting, one could not quite tell. At any rate he kept giving 

 vent to a ringing metallic note of apprehension. The female coaxed with 

 fluttering wings, and moved slowly forward as she did so, finally securing 

 the worm from her reluctant lord, when — whisk! she was back again and out 



