BIRD NOTES AFIELD 



Wc catch the infection of joyousness from the light- 

 hearted creatures, and feel that we have come to par- 

 ticipate in a summer revelry. From a mass of poison oak 

 in a little ravine below, a jack-rabbit, with long, erect ears, 

 bounds over the open mountainside into the nearest covert. A 

 gray squirrel whisks his beautiful, long tail at us as we pass, 

 and barks as if he had a bone in his throat. Far and near the 

 birds are busy in the happy toil of rearing a family; and many 

 of their human cousins could learn a lesson from their devotion 

 and discipline. 



Let us roam the winding trails together with great caution, 

 for a careless step or the snapping of a twig will make a soli- 

 tude where an instant before was a medley of animated life. 

 One of the first notes to attract our attention in these vast forest 

 halls is the high, nervous chattering of a band of chickadees, 

 and we find no difficulty in gaining a very close view of the 

 restless little birds, clinging head downward to the redwood 

 sprays more than half the time, alert and animated, continually 

 uttering their song, and acting as if the whole forest were theirs. 

 Their note may be best described as a fine, tittering siss, in the 

 rhythm of chicJ^-a-de-de-de. The chestnut-backed chickadee 

 of California is a more showy fellow than its eastern quaker 

 cousin, with its cap of brownish black, its coat and vest of 

 chestnut red, its black cravat and immaculate shirt front. 

 It is a happy, companionable little fellow, chattering to its 

 family light-heartedly amid the illimitable wastes of the forests. 



The western house-wren is another familiar friend of our 

 redwood rambles. With the exception of a shade of differ- 

 ence in the color, it is the same blithe bird that builds in count- 

 less wren boxes and nooks about gardens and farmyards 



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