BIRDS. 195 



kept repeating for some time. Tlien, as I looked on quietly and nnob- 

 tnisively, he apparently dismissed me from his mind and went about 

 himting insects. When he had gathered so many that they showed 

 in his bill he could contain himself no longer and burst out with his 

 gay, light-hearted round — hi^oh, hl-oh^ hl-oh, Jd-oh, hi. 



At Gunsight Lake, the last of July, I happened on a family of very 

 spruce-looking, recently fledged little kings whose busy, harried 

 mother looked as if she had not had time to plume herself. A 

 month later, when family cares were over for the year, at Lake 

 McDonald a ruby was seen going about with a flock of chickadees 

 and warblers, again singing snatches of his carefree, light-hearted 

 song. 



Family TURDID^: Thrushes, Solitaires, Bluebirds, etc. 



TowNSEiv'D Solitaire : Myadestes townsendl. — The solitaire — a gray 

 bird a little smaller than a mockingbird, with a very short bill, in 

 flight showing a line down the wing — was seen a number of times 

 in the park. As I had generally seen the solitaires high up on the 

 mountains I was surprised to discover one sitting in a tree a few 

 3'ards from the l;)ack of Many Glaciers Hotel. While I stared he 

 flew down on the edge of the lake looking about with utmost com- 

 posure. The same one. as I imagined, was seen several times at the 

 tepee end of the lake, and one day in the middle of July there were 

 two evidently getting food, as they flew low and then returned to the 

 tree tops; but though I looked carefully for young and followed 

 when they left, they cjuickly disappeared ahead of me in the dense 

 forest. At all our meetings they had maintained strict silence — ex- 

 cept for a rich call note suggesting the rare quality of their song — 

 the silence, as I interpreted it, of parents guarding young. But on 

 July 24, near Going-to-the-Sun Camp, one of the birds, apparently 

 accompanied l)y grown young, sang soft broken snatches of song that 

 made me long to hear again the full rhapsody of the mountain tops. 

 My only other meeting with the rare songster was at Crossley Lake, 

 when, silent and flitting, he stopped for a few moments in the top 

 of a lodgepole pine on the moraine aboi'c the lake. In the nesting 

 season of 1895 a pair were found above timberline near Midvale. 



Willow Thrush : BylocuMnfusf-escens salhicola. — The pale bufi'y 

 chest with its triangular spots, together with the uniform olive brown 

 of the upper parts, identify the willow thrush when seen; but, like 

 all the thrushes, quiet brown-backed birds of the woodland, in a coun- 

 try of dense forest growth he is very difficult to see. His calls, among 

 them the familiar bleat and the appealing whee' you of his eastern 

 congener, the veery, were apparently heard in the willow thickets of 

 the lower part of the park, and Mr. Bryant, of California, reported 

 hearing the songs at Lake McDonald and St. Mary Lake. The exqui- 



