Mount Mazama Bird Notes 277 



It is too immense, too imposing. The most inveterate screecher realizes the 

 futility of raising his voice in that vast space. The lightest breeze would 

 snatch away all that man could do, and bury it among the cliffs under the 

 humming of the pines. 'A Sea of Silence,' Joaquin Miller called it, and a sea 

 of silence it ever remains. 



The birds about the lake are not silent, however. Most of them seemea 

 unusually voluble, though this may have been only by contrast. It seemed 

 that I had never heard Red-breasted Nuthatches so full of chatter. They 

 were to be found all about the rim, clinging to the tips of the snow-bent pen- 

 dulous branches of the evergreens, flitting everywhere in companies and reg- 

 iments. These little red-breasted fellows are much more a bird of tree-tops, 

 and slender twigs, than their relative, the Slender-billed Nuthatch, which is 

 more addicted to tree creeping. With the Nuthatches were a considerable 

 number of Oregon Chickadees, but in not nearly such large numbers. Red- 

 shafted Flickers were common, and all about the timbered portions of the 

 Rim Road, the ringing, metallic call of Harris's Woodpecker could be heard. 

 These varieties seemed to stay well up on the rim; none were seen within the 

 crater itself, though, of course, my stay was short, and this may not be the rule. 



The government engineers were just completing a new trail from the sum- 

 mit when we arrived, doing away with the old, dizzy zig-zag, and the use of 

 ropes in descending. Here you encounter the first preeminent mountain birds. 

 Clark's Nutcrackers are met with all along the trail. They fly up and down 

 the cliffs in noisy bands, calling much attention to themselves by their harsh 

 notes, and striking black and white plumage. Abrupt rocky points appear to 

 be their delight, where they congregate to feed on pine cones, hammering out 

 the seeds with a great show of strength and vigor. In their flight they make a 

 great to-do, with the whirring and clapping of their wings. Few birds seem to 

 enjoy life more or fit into their surroundings more perfectly, than these hand- 

 some Crows. 



Only two kinds of Warblers were seen on this trip within the park itself. 

 Audubon's Warblers were found in numbers in the open timber back of the 

 rim, and another, which I believe was a Macgillivray's Warbler was seen 

 among the brush along the cliff trail. Farther down along the trail a Hum- 

 mingbird was seen, but we were unable to determine of what variety. Besides, 

 this, a single female California Purple Finch eyed us shyly from the low limb 

 of a tree on our first descent. 



Until this trip, I had attributed a great deal of the American Dippers' 

 peculiar preferences and habits to the fact that only swiftly-moving water fur- 

 nished the food on which they thrived. Nothing, however, can be more quiet 

 and serene than this sapphire mountain lake, which lies undisturbed, without 

 a single stream, either entering or leaving it, to break the quiet of its shores. 

 Yet here were the Dippers, bobbing and swimming along its margin. Why 

 then can they not make a living equally well about lowland streams and ponds 



