to THE HEPBURN LEUCOS'ftCTE. 



finches niovini^j alx)Ut (Icimircly uix»ii tlic face uf a clu»])])y siKiwdrift, |)ccking 

 at the surface licre and there, he l)e{iins to liarlxjr an uncanny sus|>ici<»n that 

 the l)irds do eat snow. Closer examination, liowever, shows that tlie surface 

 i>f all snow-lxinks, not freshly covered, is sprinkled with insects, — midges, 

 beetles, wasps, and the like — insects which the sjjring gales have swept up 

 to uncongenial heights and dropi)ed, ljenunil)ed or dead with cold. These 

 battered waifs the I^eucostictes gather with untiring patience, and they are 

 thus .'ihle to subsist as no other s]>ecies can, up to the very summits. 



The eggs of the Hq)l)urn I^eucosticte have not to our knowledge yet 

 been taken. Mr. D. E. Brown, then of Glacier, found these birds scooping 

 holl(»ws under grass tussocks on the middle slopes of Baker, aljove timber 

 line, on the 7th of June, 1905. On the 20th of July. 1900. Professor Lynds 

 Jones and my.self found a thick-walled grass nest settled upon bare rock 

 without protection, on the south slope of the aiguille of Wright's Peak, at 

 an elevation of some 9,000 feet, and within a hundred yards of the summit ; 

 this could hardly have Ijelonged to any other species. 



In July. 1907. knowing that it was t«Kj late for eggs, I yet s])ent several 

 days searching the precipitous wall which separates the up[)er Horseshcje 

 Basin from the glacier which heads Thunder Creek. Adult birds to the 

 numl)er of a dozen gleaned scraps from the dump of the Cascade Mine house; 

 but, alfho each made off in business-like fashion when "loaded," the stretch 

 of the wall was too vast and its recesses too mazy to permit of exact work 

 in tracing. I therefore examined carefully but with difficulty several of the 

 weathered fissures, or couloirs, which ran per])cndicularly up the face of the 

 cliff. Here, under cover of rocks which had hnlged in the throat of the 

 fissure, or which had weathered out unevenly, old nests were found, simple 

 affairs of coile<l grasses, and too dilapidated for exact measurement. From 

 one of these sites a jiebble snap])ed from the finger must have fallen three 

 hundred feet Ijefore striking the glacier below. 



Xow and then a passing bird, suspicious of my intent, stopped on some 

 projecting i)oint of rock, to utter the .sole note wJiich does duty for every 

 miK>d, chiirkk or schthub. a .sound comparable only to the concussion of a 

 small taut rojje on a flag-pole. Finally, neir the top f>f the Sahale fllacier. 

 I got a line at two hundred yards on an (Kcupied fissure, and traced Ixuh 

 parent Leucostictes into its distant recesses. Climbing cautiously up a sharp 

 slo|)e of ice. my ffxitsteps were guided by the almost incessant clamor of young 

 birds. .Arrived at the upper lip of the glacier, however, I found that it stoo<l 

 away from the rock-wail some fifteen feet, and that a cha.sm some forty feet 

 in depth yawned beneath. Into this forbidding bcnischrund. one of the 

 fledgling Ixmcostictes had tumbled. He was not more than two-thirds grown 

 (July r8th) and down feathers still fluttered from his cheeks, but he was a 

 plucky little fellow, and had managed to scramble up off the ice onto a piece 



