TOWNTSEND'S SOLITAIRE 325 



bluebird, and also the mockingbird, the California thrasher, and the 

 sage thrasher, all of which seems a bit fanciful. 



Forrest S. Hanford (1917) writes thus attractively of the songster 

 in the solitude of its mountain retreat: 



The little shadowy canyon wherein I rested enjoyed a hushed and solemn tran- 

 quility not diminished, but rather added to, by a drowsy murmuring from a 

 bright brook splashing on its way to the lake. This, I thought, could be none 

 other than the haunt of a Solitaire, and I wished that I might see the bird; and 

 as in answer to my prayer came one, a small gray ghost of a bird that flitted 

 silently in and out the leafy corridors of its retreat, finally resting on the limb of 

 a pine not ten feet away. And as I watched, the feathers of his breast and 

 throat rose with a song that softly echoed the beautiful voices of the brook, the 

 gurgling of eddies, the silvery tinkle of tiny cascades, and the deeper medley of 

 miniature falls. Infinitely fine and sweet was this rendering of mountain music. 

 At times the song of the bird rose above the sound of the water in rippling cadences 

 not shrill, but in an infinite number of runs and modulated trills, dying away 

 again and again to low plaintive whispering notes suggestive of tender memories. 



The star performance of the solitaire is its flight song, which has 

 been referred to by only a few observers. Mr. Saunders says in his 

 notes: "The flight that accompanies the song varies greatly. As I 

 have observed it, the bird hovers for a long time high in the air and 

 sings continuously while doing so." Charles L. Whittle (1922) who 

 observed it, also in Montana, has published a diagram of the flight, 

 and has written the following description of it: 



On May 15 my attention was attracted to the Solitaires by hearing them sing 

 as they were migrating northerly over the mountains as single birds and in pairs. 

 They commonly flew well above the mountains so that identification was made 

 by their songs. * * * A number of times on this date a Solitaire could be 

 heard singing high in the air and well above us up the mountain, and sometimes 

 it could be seen coming down the steep slope just over the trees with great velocity, 

 alighting suddenly on a tree top, when he would again burst into song. On 

 May 24 I witnessed the beginning of a song-flight, no doubt a courtship per- 

 formance, of which the precipitate descent over the tree tops just described is 

 the termination, although at that time the birds appeared to have mated. 



I was standing on a nearly treeless ridge, at an elevation of 7,300 feet, when a 

 Solitaire which was singing close by on a stunted pine, flew upward in two series 

 of irregular spirals. The first series was made by circling to the left, and the 

 second series by circling to the right, as shown diagramatically in figure 30. By 

 this method the bird mounted to a height of perhaps 500 feet, singing at intervals. 

 Then he started off as though to leave the vicinity, when, suddenly and with 

 astonishing velocity, he plunged downward, apparently with set wings, in a 

 succession of steeply-pitched zigzags, almost to the ground, and then turned 

 abruptly upward again in a second series of spirals of the same character, which 

 ended in another zigzag drop of at least 700 feet when he disappeared down the 

 slope. 



Authorities seem to differ greatly as to the singing season of the 

 solitaire ; several have reported its singing in fall and winter, and some 

 state that it ceases to sing during the normal song period of other 



