756 
Among the Birds of the Yosemite. 
A mother duck with her family of ten 
little ones, waltzing round and round in 
a pot-hole ornamented with foam bells, 
huge rocks leaning over them, cascades 
above and below and beside them, made 
one of the most interesting bird pictures 
I ever saw. 
I have never found the great northern 
diver in the park lakes. Most of them 
are inaccessible to him. He might plump 
down into them, but would hardly be 
able to get out of them, since, with his 
small wings and heavy body, a wide ex¬ 
panse of elbow room is required in rising. 
Now and then one may be seen in the 
lower Sierra lakes to the northward about 
Lassens Butte and Shasta, at a height of 
four thousand to five thousand feet, mak¬ 
ing the loneliest places lonelier with the 
wildest of wild cries. 
Plovers are found along the sandy 
shores of nearly all the mountain lakes, 
tripping daintily on the water’s edge, 
picking up insects; and it is interesting 
to learn how few of these familiar birds 
are required to make a solitude cheerful. 
Sandhill cranes are sometimes found 
in comparatively small marshes, mere 
dots in the mighty forest. In such spots, 
at an elevation of from six thousand to 
eight thousand feet above the sea, they 
are occasionally met in pairs as early as 
the end of May, while the snow is still 
deep in the surrounding fir and sugar- 
pine woods. And on sunny days in au¬ 
tumn, large flocks may be seen sailing at 
a great height above the forests, shaking 
the crisp air into rolling waves with their 
hearty koor-r-r, koor-r-r uck-uck, soaring 
in circles for hours together on their 
majestic wings, seeming to float without 
effort like clouds, eying the wrinkled 
landscape outspread like a map mottled 
with lakes and glaciers and meadows, 
and streaked with shadowy canons and 
streams, and surveying every frog marsh 
and sandy flat within a hundred miles. 
Eagles and hawks are oftentimes seen 
above the ridges and domes. The great¬ 
est height at which I have observed them 
was about twelve thousand feet, over the 
summits of Mount Hoffman, in the mid¬ 
dle region of the park. A few pairs had 
their nests on the cliffs of this mountain, 
and could be seen every day in sum' 
mer, hunting marmots, mountain beavers, 
pikas, etc. A pair of golden eagles have 
made their home in Yosemite ever since 
I went there thirty years ago. Their 
nest is on the Nevada Fall Cliff, oppo¬ 
site the Liberty Cap. Their screams are 
rather pleasant to hear in the vast gulfs 
between the granite cliffs, and they help 
the owls in keeping the echoes busy. 
But of all the birds of the High Sierra, 
the strangest, noisiest, and most notable 
is the Clarke crow (Nucifraga Columbi¬ 
ana). He is a foot long and nearly two 
feet in extent of wing, ashy gray in gen¬ 
eral color, with black wings, white tail, 
and a strong sharp bill, with which he 
digs into pine cones for the seeds on 
which he mainly subsists. He is quick, 
boisterous, jerky, and irregular in his 
movements and speech, and makes a tre¬ 
mendously loud and showy advertise¬ 
ment of himself, —swooping and diving 
in deep curves across gorges and valleys 
from ridge to ridge, alighting on dead 
spars, looking warily about him, and leav¬ 
ing his dry springy perches trembling 
from the vigor of his kick as he launches 
himself for a new flight, screaming from 
time to time loud enough to be heard 
more than a mile in still weather. He 
dwells far back oil the high, storm-beaten 
margin of the forest, where the mountain 
pine, juniper, and hemlock grow wide 
apart on glacier pavements and domes 
and rough crumbling ridges, and the 
dwarf pine makes a low crinkled growth 
along the flanks of the summit peaks. 
In so open a region, of course, he is well 
seen. Everybody notices him, and no¬ 
body at first knows what to make of him. 
One guesses he must be a woodpecker, 
another a crow or some sort of jay, an¬ 
other a magpie. He seems to be a pret¬ 
ty thoroughly mixed and fermented com¬ 
pound of all these birds, has all their 
