232 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



glare, take cold, and die. There they lie as if 

 on a white cloth purposely outspread for them, 

 and the dun sparrows find them a rich and varied 

 repast requiring no pursuit, — bees and butter- 

 flies on ice, and many spicy beetles, a perpetual 

 feast, on tables big for guests so small, and in 

 vast banqueting halls ventilated by cool breezes 

 that ruffle the feathers of the fairy brownies. 

 Happy fellows, no rivals come to dispute posses- 

 sion with them. No other birds, not even hawks, 

 as far as I have noticed, live so high. They 

 see people so seldom, they flutter around the ex- 

 plorer with the liveliest curiosity, and come down 

 a little way, sometimes nearly a mile, to meet him 

 and conduct him into their icy homes. 



When I was exploring the Merced group, 

 climbing up the grand canon between the Merced 

 and Red mountains into the fountain amphi- 

 theatre of an ancient glacier, just as I was ap- 

 proaching the small active glacier that leans back 

 in the shadow of Merced Mountain, a flock of 

 twenty or thirty of these little birds, the first I 

 had seen, came down the canon to meet me, fly- 

 ing low, straight toward me as if they meant to 

 fly in my face. Instead of attacking me or pass- 

 ing by, they circled round my head, chirping 

 and fluttering for a minute or two, then turned 

 and escorted me up the canon, alighting on the 

 nearest rocks on either hand, and flying ahead a 

 few yards at a time to keep even with me. 



