SUMMER BIRDS OF THE REDWOODS 



MONG the coast valleys and lower moim- 

 tain ranges of Northern California flourishes 

 the peerless redwood, second only to the big 

 tree of the Sierra Nevada valleys. In the 

 more northern portions of its range it grows 

 in vast forests, but in Sonoma County, and 

 thence southward to San Francisco Bay, and below, its do- 

 main is invaded by the oaks, madrono, manzanita and chapar- 

 ral. In this region during the midsummer season, when the 

 fog hangs in an almost perpetual curtain over San Francisco 

 Bay and the land adjacent, it is a delight to slip away among 

 the secluded redwood groves and see what the birds are about 

 — to lie in the dark shade of foliage and watch the play of life 

 in the branches overhead — to stand by the stream where a 

 mother sandpiper is leading her nimble young along the 

 pebbled shore, and where the trout flashes in the silver stream 

 as the king-fisher, with ominous rattle, flies overhead. Here all 

 is beautiful! The sunlight filtering through the tracery of 

 drooping boughs is transmuted to a flaming rose color, glowing 

 amid the cool greens and the purple shadows that invest it. 



High up in the top of a dead limb a California woodpecker 

 is cheerily rapping away, while a pine squirrel scampers gaily 

 up the trunk, chattering shrilly as he frisks over the rough bark. 



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