The Ruby-crowned Kinglets 
Taken on Ml. Shasta looking west Photo by the Author 
WHAT THE RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET SEES 
can seldom tell in which tree he is keeping a paid engagement. Well, 
who wants to bother the little fellows, anyhow! 
A Sabbath spent on Shasta! apotheosis of rest! ultimate of soul’s 
desire!—save Heaven. Best of all, the Ruby-crowned Kinglet sings! 
It is the Ruby-crown who captivates the imagination. Tireless he shouts 
from the tree-tops, and though charmed to the full with the rapture of 
the bird’s shouting, one still wonders why he sings. For many moon 
cycles he has been a bachelor, a mere unit in the winter throng, careless 
of aught but himself and his gnawing belly. Spring roused him to thought 
of mating. The urge of hot blood led him to notice, to pursue and cap¬ 
ture, to mate and then to celebrate in an ever-recurring note of ecstasy. 
But now? Now his mate sits demurely upon the nest. Love’s favors 
are past, and there remains for him, what? Remains loyalty! Devotion! 
That swerveless passion of love which is above the heat of the blood 
and the expectation of favors. The singer—surely he knows not why— 
still shouts his joy from tree-top to tree-top, and all that his mate may 
be comforted in her long vigil. The bird rises above himself, and is, 
for a season, of that altruistic fellowship of which God is the founder, 
and we humans but unworthy members. For a season! Alas! there 
is the strange blighting pity of it. Summer ends, the necessity is over. 
Nature’s subtle purposes have been accomplished, and the birds forget— 
are to each other henceforth as though they had never been. 
Almost our singer in his ecstasy has seemed to grasp the reality of 
soul-life and to demand entrance into the fellowship of the immortals. 
And then, even while we are moved to call him ‘brother,’ the bird forgets— 
808 
