BIRDS NOT ON EXHIBITION. 19 



There are birds in the State, plenty of them, 

 but they are not on exhibition like the moun- 

 tains and their wonders. No driver knows the 

 way to their haunts, and no guide-book points 

 them out. Even a bird student may travel a 

 day's journey, and not encounter so many as 

 one shall see in a small orchard in New Eng- 

 land. He may rise with the dawn, and hear 

 nothing like the glorious morning chorus that 

 stirs one in the Atlantic States. He may search 

 the trees and shrubberies for long June days, 

 and not find so many nests as will cluster about 

 one cottage at home. 



Yet the birds are here, but they are shy, and 

 they possess the true Colorado spirit, they are 

 mountain-worshipers. As the time approaches 

 when each bird leaves society and retires for a 

 season to the bosom of its own family, many of 

 the feathered residents of the State bethink 

 them of their inaccessible canons. The saucy 

 jay abandons the settlements where he has been 

 so familiar as to dispute with the dogs for their 

 food, and sets up his homestead in a tall pine- 

 tree on a slope which to look at is to grow 

 dizzy ; the magpie, boldest of birds, steals away 

 to some secure retreat ; the meadow-lark makes 

 her nest in the monotonous mesa, where it is as 

 well hidden as a bobolink's nest in a New Eng- 

 land meadow. 



