IN SIGHT OF SHASTA 



down his black wing, he is a showy fellow, but his emphatic 

 peevish squeaky call reminds us that fine feathers do not neces- 

 sarily make fine birds. Harris's woodpecker is here also, nest- 

 ing like all the members of the tribe, in a hole dug into a rotten 

 stump. 



There is one inland wader that frequents the Sacramento 

 shores, the familiar spotted sandpiper of the eastern states, 

 with its olive-gray back and white breast marked with round 

 spots. Long-legged and body a-teeter as it runs beside the 

 stream, it cannot be mistaken. When it takes to flight we mark 

 the white bar on the wings and hear its high sandpiper call- 

 note. 



In the late afternoon the russet-backed thrushes begin their 

 ethereal caroling, and presently the western night-hawk hies him 

 from the privacy of his woodland retreat where his mottled 

 brown plumage blends with the tree trunks, and launches into 

 the air, cleaving the golden sky on his long, slender white- 

 barred wings, in light but somewhat fluttering pursuit of his in- 

 sect prey. Deeper and deeper the blue evening shadows set- 

 tle upon the castellated crags, while the roseate light lingers on 

 Shasta's crown of snow. Then the stars through the tall pines 

 faintly glimmering — brooding stillness, save for the endless 

 rush of the river, the rhythmic hum of a cricket and the fine 

 high clicking of a night insect! The silhouetted leaves are 

 motionless — the low hazel bushes, the dainty little clean-cut 

 maples, trailers of wild grape, stiff oak-boughs, airy cotton- 

 woods, with spruce and pine topping them all in silent reverie. 

 Through the screen of leaves the hazy blue mountain ridge 

 shows, with a luminous greenish-yellow sky above it. The 

 forms of trees grow more confused and uncertain amid the 



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