26 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 
In a report of his death written about two years ago occurs this lan- 
guage: 
The name of Denis Gale will bring to the minds of many ornithologists, particularly 
those who have worked in the mountains of Colorado, the picture of an elderly gentleman 
whose energy in bird study knew no bounds, who was willing to brave wind and heat and 
cold and storm in his tramps from valley groves to snow-clad mountain crests in the 
interests of ornithology, whose collections have helped enrich the splendid collections of 
Smithsonian Institution and whose notes were of great assistance to Captain Bendire and 
others, for Mr. Gale, while always willing to furnish information to others, was not much 
given to publishing his observations himself.t 
Another account in the same issue of The Auk concluded as follows: 
In the history of our state the name of Denis Gale will be recorded as a faithful, 
enthusiastic bird student, and the memory of his life and work among us will ever serve 
as an impetus to us younger bird students to take up the work where he left it and do 
our little part in carrying it to completion.? 
In this connection it is interesting to note also the following paragraph 
in a letter to the writer from Mr. Gale’s daughter, Dr. M. Jean Gale, 
under date February 7, 1906: 
The few times I had the pleasure of accompanying my father on any of his trips I 
was especially struck with his untiring patience in searching out the habits and nesting 
places of his feathered friends. In some way they seemed to recognize that he was their 
friend, going over the same locality year after year as he did. His success in the finding 
of Clarke’s crows’ nests was obtained only by weeks and even months of careful obser- 
vation of the knowing birds before the nest was even constructed. Notwithstanding the 
large number of eggs taken and prepared by him, not one was taken ruthlessly or where 
the nest could not be refilled the same season. It was a labor of love from his first youth- 
ful efforts until the more enduring ones in Colorado were finished. It seemed eminently 
fitting that as he was quietly laid to rest, the air should be filled with low, soft twitterings 
of a host of feathered harbingers of spring—his friends until the last. 
Denis Gale’s work in Colorado was, as his notes show, confined chiefly 
to the foothills and mountains of Boulder County and southern Larimer 
County, with occasional brief excursions to the adjacent plains in the 
same counties. One familiar with the region in which he worked and the 
wide scope of country covered by him, with its numerous streams flowing 
in canyons hundreds and often two thousand feet below the crests of the 
divides, may appreciate the wearisome toil of passing from stream to 
stream and from divide to divide in his search for birds, often following 
1 Junrus HENDERSON, ‘‘Dennis Gale,’ The Auk, Vol. XX, October, 1905, p. 422. 
2 A. H. Fetcer, ‘Denis Gale,” The Auk, Vol. XX, October, 1905, pp. 442, 443. 
