BIRD NOTES AFIELD 



settling dusk — ^just a tangle of vague leafage with a blue-black 

 sky in patches overhead. An owl calls as the crackling camp- 

 fire illuminates the somber foliage ere we hie us away to sleep. 



I would that I might tell of many walks a-birding up the 

 mountains, but a glimpse must suffice. Leaving the willows of 

 the bottom-land where that noisy ventriloquist, the long-tailed 

 chat — an overgrown warbler with olive hood and black mask, 

 greenish cape and bright yellow vest — lurked by the stream, 

 calling and singing, I started one fine day up the long moun- 

 tain slopes for the summit of Castle Crags. Overhead flew a 

 sparrow-hawk, his sharp keen cry — ^ee-^ee-^ee-^ee — sound- 

 ing appropriately in that wilderness. Amid the ceanothus 

 bushes a flock of the tiny western gnatcatchers were making 

 merry. Now and then a turn in the road revealed that cyno- 

 sure of the north, Shasta, its rugged slopes sweeping from 

 the dark forest hem into the heights of eternal snow. I 

 ascended to the domain of the sugar-pine — that graceful coni- 

 fer with short needles on the symmetrical boughs holding out 

 their big pendent cones. The red-stemmed manzanita bushes 

 are decked in russet berries to the joy of the birds. I catch the 

 plaintive, high-pitched pipe of the brown creeper, emd the far- 

 off k<^}(-!(ak-k<^k of a nuthatch. 



Yonder struts a mountain-quail, stealthily sedate in car- 

 riage, his two erect plumes, like long slender horns, nervously 

 quivering as his lordship turns his alert head. His chestnut 

 throat and sides, gaily rimmed and striped with white, give him 

 such a trim, aristocratic air. As he moves through the brush 

 he calls to his mate with a low crooning chuck chuck chuck* 

 but his spirited cry when free from menace of approaching 

 danger is a loud ^e pa' a. 



[1241 



