102 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



THE WATER-OUZEL AT HOME * 



By William Frederic Bade. 



The avifauna of the Kern Cafion, especially at the 

 head-waters of the Kern and in the neighborhood of the 

 Kern lakes, proved both varied and interesting even to 

 a casual observer during the Sierra Club outing of 1903. 

 The Steller jay (Cyanocitta stelleri), the Clarke nut- 

 cracker (Nucifraga columbiana), the Louisiana tanager 

 (Piranga Ludoviciana) , the Arctic bluebird (Sialia arc- 

 tica), j uncos, several species of hawk and grouse, Brew- 

 er's blackbirds (Scolecophagus cyanocephalus) , and the 

 water-ouzel (Cinclus Mexicanus), were among the com- 

 monest of the feathered folk seen near Camp Olney. The 

 last-mentioned bird I had seen for the first time on the 

 upper Klamath River — a bobbing, bowing, winking com- 

 pound of many avian charms. But it was not the winsome 

 bird I learned to know on the banks of the Coyote. One 

 morning (July 2d) I was casting the fly on a few foam- 

 flecked pools near its junction with the Kern. Fed by the 

 melting snows of the Great Divide, every morning found 

 the creek at its fullest, for then it was carrying past Camp 

 Olney the increment of the previous day's thaw. A keen 

 ear could easily detect in the thunder of its falls a fuller 

 crescendo, and the water leaped from the escarpments 

 with greater abandon. True to her name the water-ouzel 

 was there in her favorite environment of alder, pines, and 

 flying spray. 



* With photographs by the author. 



