The Mountain Bluebird. 



''finis/' In "The Mountain'' one looks with equal be- 

 wilderment at etchings of what purport to be well-known 

 mountains in the Alps. They are as unreal as Gustave 

 Dore's landscapes of the Dantean inferno. The author's 

 descriptions of mountain scenery are interesting in them- 

 selves, but they betray unmistakably the interest and 

 knowledge of a man who has never conquered lofty 

 summits as a climber. 



Photography has in these days become a valuable aid 

 both to the alpinist and the ornithologist. Besides, the 

 type of scientific interest which students of nature have 

 cultivated since the days of Darwin calls for the kind of 

 accuracy which photography supplies. It fails at only 

 one point ; it does not reproduce colors. At all events, the 

 application of color-photography to birds in the wild state 

 cannot be seriously considered at present. This seems 

 especially unfortunate in the case of the Mountain Blue- 

 bird {Sialia arctica, Swainson* ; 6^. currucoides of Bech- 

 stein), whose exquisite coloring makes it rank easily as 

 the bluest and most beautiful of the gentle family of 

 bluebirds. 



Campers in the Boreal zone of the Sierra Nevada soon 

 become acquainted with the Alountain Bluebird. Along 

 the edges of alpine meadows and in open stands of tam- 

 arack pine, mostly at altitudes ranging from 7,000 feet 

 upward, this bluebird rears its brood. Ridgway's descrip- 

 tion of the plumage of the male as ''plain rich turquoise, 

 cerulean or sevres blue above" holds true of most of the 

 specimens I saw in the alpine lake region north of the 



* The English naturalist, William Swainson (born 1789) was the first 

 to describe the Mountain Bluebird from one specimen obtained in 1825 at 

 Fort Franklin, Mackenzie. His description will be found in the Fauna 

 Boreali- Americana (1829-37), Vol. II, 1831, Plate 39. In publishing this 

 work he was associated with Sir John Richardson. The colored plate of 

 the bird, being made from a dead specimen, is certainly wrong in the 

 drawing of the head. Some give to the German naturalist and forester, 

 J. :M. Bechstein (1757-1822) the credit of having named and described 

 the Mountain Bluebird for the first time, giving it the species name 

 currucoides. 



