Tl^ifo 5bC8 of (moun^ainj^utntni^0 



look, they gave me no further attention. Al- 

 though trustful and friendly, they were reserved 

 and mannerly. From time to time there were 

 comings and goings among them. Almost every 

 snow-dashed incoming stranger gave me a look 

 as he entered, and then without the least sus- 

 picion turned to his own feathers and affairs. 

 With such honor, I forgot my frosted nose and 

 the blizzard. Presently, however, I crawled 

 forth and groped through the blinding hurricane 

 and entered a friendly forest, where wind-shaped 

 trees at timber-line barely peeped beneath the 

 drifted snow. 



^ The rosy finch, the brown-capped leucosticte 

 of the Rockies (in the Sierra it is the gray- 

 crowned), is a little larger than a junco and is one 

 of the bravest and most trusting of the winged 

 mountaineers. It is the most numerous of the 

 resident bird-population. These cheery little 

 bits live in the mountain snows, rarely descend- 

 ing below timber-line. Occasionally they nest 

 as high as thirteen thousand five hundred feet. 

 The largest bird resident of the snowy heights 

 is the ptarmigan. Rarely does this bird de- 



113 



