Bird Life of Yosemite Park. 247 



gether he is a well-marked individual and not to be mis- 

 taken. His mate is duller in tone, the black being re- 

 placed by mottled brown. As she leads her brood through 

 the forest she calls them with a sweet crooning whistle 

 which is one of the familiar notes of the midsummer- 

 time. 



Upon any sandy or gravelly bar of the river one may 

 chance upon the only long-legged shore-bird or wader 

 of the Yosemite — the spotted sandpiper. You may 

 know him by his white breast spotted with brown, his 

 brown back, his slender feet, his long bill and his habit 

 of running about and poking into the sand for food. 

 He is not to be confounded with that water-sprite of 

 the boisterous mountain streams, the water-ouzel, that 

 intrepid little stone-colored waif that runs into the rapids 

 where they foam most madly, braces himself for a 

 plunge and ducks under in search of his well-earned 

 meal. The ouzel is a land bird that has taken to the 

 water and become an adept in this most exciting kind 

 of aquatic sport. He cannot be mistaken in his suit 

 of gray for any other bird, for no other haunter of the 

 rock-strewn rapids will coolly flit down into the icy 

 water and disappear from view, bobbing up anon 

 as serenely as if it were a matter of course to court 

 death unceasingly in such seething, surging torrents. 



On first arriving in the Yosemite, the majesty of the 

 rocks so dominates the mind that one can scarce bring 

 the attention down to anything so slight as a bird, but 

 as the imagination becomes adjusted to the unaccus- 

 tomed scope of nature, the pageant of wild flowers and 

 the birds flitting about in forest and meadow give that 

 humanizing touch of frailty and tenderness which is so 

 entrancing in its contrast to the austere grandeur of 

 the everlasting walls of granite. The tiny rufous and 

 calliope humming-birds — the most diminutive of feath- 

 ered forms — buzzing and darting amid manzanita and 

 ceonothus bushes, full of the vim and zest of life com- 

 pacted in such mites of bodies, — how the fancy roams 



