The Fox Sparrows 



at different levels and looks mild inquiry. You are inspected critically 

 from all sides, but interest soon gives way to boredom. Napoo, says 

 one bird with a chuckle, and prepares to move away. Frantically 

 the bird-man renews his screeping. The birds are a trifle puzzled, 

 but this is not the first of nature's mysteries which they have had to 

 pass up, and almost before one knows it the curious crowd has melted 

 away, and silence reigns again in the chaparral. It is rather humorous 

 and rather pitiful, for, honestly, this is about all there is to it — our 

 entertainment of a hundred million guests! 



When it is remembered that our own Fox Sparrows nest only at 

 the higher levels, 6000, 8000, 10,000 feet, we may be pardoned for following 

 these retreating hosts northward on some vacation trip, to British Co- 

 lumbia or Alaska. We shall begin to overtake them first at sea-level, 

 on the islands of Puget Sound or along the Olympic Coast of Washington. 

 We are tantalized, as the tent pegs are being driven on a mossy level 

 just above the beach line, by certain sprightly songs bursting out now 

 here and now there from the copse. 



We labor under a sense of avian surveillance as we gather fuel 

 from the beach, but the songs are too joyous and limpid to make precise 

 connections with anything in previous experience. It is not till the 

 cool of the evening, when we seek the spring, back in the depths of the 

 thicket, that we come upon a fair bird-maiden slyly regaling herself 

 upon a luscious salmon-berry, flushed to the wine-red of perfection, 

 while three of her suitors peal invitations to separate bowers in the 

 neighboring tangles. She flees guiltily on detection, but the secret is 

 out; we know now where these shy wood nymphs keep themselves in 

 summer. 



The male bird is sometimes emboldened by the moment of song to 

 venture into the tops of willows or alders, but even here he hugs the screen 

 of leaves and is ready in a trice to dive into the more familiar element 

 of bushes. Once under cover of the protecting salal, or among the 

 crowding ferns, the Fox Sparrows are excelled by none in their ability 

 to get about with a minimum of disturbance; and the longest journeys, 

 such as are made necessary in the time of clamoring young, appear to 

 be made by slipping and sliding through the maze of intersecting stems. 

 The song is varied and vivacious; but, save for the opening notes, is 

 neither very strong nor very brilliant. The opening phrase, however, 

 Pewit, hen, comes as a tiny bugle call into which is distilled the essence 

 of all dank hollows, of all rustling leaves, of all murmuring tides, and 

 of all free-blowing breezes. It is the authentic voice of the little 

 wild. 



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