753 
Among the Birds of the Yosemite. 
clination to hunt them, you may sit clown 
at the foot of a tree near enough to see 
and hear the happy reunion. One touch 
of nature makes the whole world kin ; 
and it is truly wonderful how love-telling 
the small voices of these birds are, and 
how far they reach through the woods 
into one another’s hearts and into ours. 
The tones are so perfectly human and 
so full of anxious affection, few moun¬ 
taineers can fail to be touched by them. 
They are cared for until full grown. 
On the 20th of August, as I was passing 
along the margin of a garden spot on the 
head-waters of the San Joaquin, a grouse 
rose from the ruins of an old juniper that 
had been uprooted and brought down by 
an avalanche from a cliff overhead. She 
threw herself at my feet, limped and flut¬ 
tered and gasped, showing, as I thought, 
that she had a nest and was raising a 
second brood. Looking for the eggs, I 
was surprised to see a strong - winged 
flock nearly as large as the mother fly up 
around me. 
Instead of seeking a warmer climate 
when the winter storms set in, these hardy 
birds stay all the year in the High Sierra 
forests, and I have never known them 
to suffer in any sort of weather. Able 
to live on the buds of pine, spruce, and 
fir, they are forever independent in the 
matter of food supply, which gives so 
many of us trouble, dragging us here 
and there away from our best work. 
How gladly I would live on pine buds, 
however pitchy, for the sake of this grand 
independence. With all his superior re¬ 
sources, man makes more distracting dif¬ 
ficulty concerning food than any other 
of the family. 
The mountain quail or plumed par¬ 
tridge (Oreortyx pictus plumiferus ) is 
common in all the upper portions of the 
park, though nowhere- found in large 
numbers. He ranges considerably high¬ 
er than the grouse in summer, but is 
unable to endure the heavy storms of 
winter. When his food is buried he de¬ 
scends the range to the brushy foothills, 
vol. lxxxii. — no. 494. 48 
at a height of from two thousand to three 
thousand feet above the sea ; but like 
every true mountaineer, he is quick to 
follow the spring back into the highest 
mountains. I think he is the very hand¬ 
somest and most interesting of all the 
American partridges, larger and hand¬ 
somer than the famous Hob White, or 
even the fine California valley quail or 
the Massena partridge of Arizona and 
Mexico. That he is not so regarded, is 
because as a lonely mountaineer he is 
not half known. 
His plumage is delicately shaded, 
brown above, white and rich chestnut 
below and on the sides, with many dainty 
markings of black and white and gray 
here and there, while his beautiful head 
plume, three or four inches long, nearly 
straight, composed of two feathers close¬ 
ly folded so as to appear as one, is worn 
jauntily slanted backward like a single 
feather in a boy’s cap, giving him a very 
marked appearance. They wander over 
the lonely mountains in family flocks of 
from six to fifteen, beneath ceanothus, 
manzanita, and wild cherry thickets, and 
over dry sandy flats, glacier meadows, 
rocky ridges, and beds of bryantliuS 
around glacier lakes, especially in au¬ 
tumn when the berries of the upper gar¬ 
dens are ripe, uttering low clucking notes 
to enable them to keep together. When 
they are so suddenly disturbed that they 
are afraid they cannot escape the danger 
by running into thickets, they rise with 
a fine hearty whir and scatter in the 
brush over an area of half a square mile 
or so, a few of them diving into leafy 
trees. But as soon as the danger is past, 
the parents with a clear piping note call 
them together again. By the end of July 
the young are two thirds grown and fly 
well, though only dire necessity can com¬ 
pel them to try their wings. In gait, 
gestures, habits, and general behavior 
they are like domestic chickens, but in¬ 
finitely finer, searching for insects and 
seeds, looking to this side and that, 
scratching among fallen leaves, jumping 
