UNDER GENIAL SKIES 



note of our meadowlark contrasts with that of the 

 Pacific variety as our hard, brilliant blue skies con- 

 trast with the softer and tenderer skies of this sun- 

 blessed land. 



II. LAWN BIRDS 



To have a smooth grassy lawn about your house 

 on the Pacific coast is to have spread out before 

 you at nearly all hours of the day a pretty spectacle 

 of wild-bird life. Warblers, sparrows, thrushes, 

 titlarks, and plovers flutter across it as thick as 

 autumn leaves — not so highly colored, yet showing 

 a pleasing variety of tints, while the black phoebe 

 flits about your porch and arbor vines. 



Audubon's warbler is the most numerous, prob- 

 ably ten to one of any other variety of birds. Then 

 the white-crowned sparrows, Gambel's sparrow, the 

 tree sparrow, and one or two other sparrows of 

 which I am not sure are next in number. 



Two species of birds from the Far North are 

 usually represented by a solitary specimen of each, 

 namely, the Alaska hermit thrush and the American 

 pipit, or titlark. The thrush is silent, but has its 

 usual trim, alert look. The pipit is the only walker 

 in the group. It walks about like our oven-bird 

 with the same pretty movement of the head and a 

 teetering motion of the hind part of the body. 



While in Alaska, in July, 1899, with the Harri- 

 man Expedition, I found the nest of the pipit far 



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