156 Bicknell on Hylocichla alicice bicknelli . 
But to return to the mountain. It would hardly be justifiable 
to make a positive statement about a difficult song that had been 
but once identified, but I feel positive that the Thrushes which 
were last heard that evening about our camp on the extreme 
summit of the mountain were of the new form. Night was 
rapidly falling, and the valleys were in darkness, when one sang 
several times near the camp, and for some time afterwards a sin- 
gle call-note was occasionally heard, and the varying distance of 
the sound showed that the birds were still active. Excepting 
these sounds, the last bird notes heard were those of the Yellow- 
bellied Flycatcher. 
The sharp northwest wind continued late, and the night be- 
came clear and cold. Shortly after midnight the bright moon 
showed the temperature, by a thermometer which I had hung 
beside the camp, to be 35 0 , and at sunrise it stood at 32 0 . Before 
daylight I was standing on a boulder of conglomerate on the dim 
mountain’s brow listening for the awakening of the birds. The 
first songs heard were those of the Hermit Thrush, Snowbird, 
and Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, which began almost simultane- 
ously, followed a little later by those of the Olive-backed Thrush 
and the Mourning Warbler, but H. bicknelli was not heard, 
or at least not near enough to be distinguished among the other 
species. 
The increasing light upon the mountain, seemed to attract the 
birds from below, whither, perhaps, they had retired for the 
night, and soon many different notes were to be heard about 
the camp ; not, however, in that boisterous chorus with which 
the day is often announced about our homes, in which the notes of 
many individuals of many species are blended in such confused 
medley that separate voices are almost indistinguishable, but 
simply the association of a few vocalists, the very isolation of 
whose position endowed their voices with an additional interest 
and charm. 
After those already mentioned the Black-poll Warbler ( Den - 
droeca striata ) began its unpretending notes, which always to 
me suggest a short dotted line, and this song, with that of the 
Black-and-Yellow Warbler, occasionally alternated about us in 
agreeable contrast. Now and then a Canada Nuthatch, on its 
morning tour, tarried to inspect some dead trunk or thinly clothed 
tree, upon the projecting apex of which, or that of some com- 
