757 
Among the Birds of the Yosemite. 
strength, cunning, shyness, thievishness, 
and wary, suspicious curiosity combined 
and condensed. He flies like a wood¬ 
pecker, hammers dead limbs for insects, 
digs big holes in pine cones to get at the 
seeds, cracks nuts held between his toes, 
cries like a crow or Steller jay, — but 
in a far louder, harsher, and more for¬ 
bidding tone of voice, — and besides his 
crow caws and screams, has a great va¬ 
riety of small chatter talk, mostly uttered 
in a fault-finding tone. Like the mag¬ 
pie, he steals articles that can be of no 
use to him. Once when I made my camp 
in a grove at Cathedral Lake, I chanced 
to leave a cake of soap on the shore 
where I had been washing, and a few 
minutes afterward I saw my soap flying 
past me through the grove, pushed by a 
Clarke crow. 
In winter, when the snow is deep, the 
cones of the mountain pines empty, and 
the juniper, hemlock, and dwarf pine or¬ 
chards buried, he comes down to glean 
seeds in the yellow pine forests, startling 
the grouse with his loud screams. But 
even in winter, in calm weather, he stays 
in his high mountain home, defying the 
bitter frost. Once I lay snowbound 
through a three days’ storm at the tim¬ 
ber-line on Mount Shasta ; and while the 
roaring snow-laden blast swept by, one of 
these brave birds came to my camp, and 
began hammering at the cones on the 
topmost branches of half-buried pines, 
without showing the slightest distress. 
I have seen Clarke crows feeding their 
young as early as June 19, at a height 
of more than ten thousand feet, when 
nearly the whole landscape was snow- 
covered. 
They are excessively shy, and keep 
away from the traveler as long as they 
think they are observed ; but when one 
goes on without seeming to notice them, 
or sits down and keeps still, their curi¬ 
osity speedily gets the better of their 
caution, and they come flying from tree 
to tree, nearer and nearer, and watch 
every motion. Few, I am afraid, will 
ever learn to like this bird, he is so sus¬ 
picious and self-reliant, and his voice is 
so harsh that to most ears the scream of 
the eagle will seem melodious compared 
with it. Yet the mountaineer who has 
battled and suffered and struggled must 
admire bis strength and endurance, — 
the way he faces the mountain weather, 
cleaves the icy blasts, cares for his young, 
and digs a living from the stern wilder¬ 
ness. Higher yet than Nucifraga dwells 
the little dun - headed sparrow ( Leuco- 
sticte tephrocotis). From early spring 
to late autumn he is to be found only 
on the snowy icy peaks at the head of 
the glacier cirques and canons. His feed¬ 
ing grounds in spring are the snow sheets 
between the peaks, and in midsummer 
and autumn the glaciers. Many bold in¬ 
sects go mountaineering almost as soon 
as they are boi*n, ascending the highest 
summits on the mild breezes that blow 
in from the sea every day during steady 
weather ; but comparatively few of these 
adventurers find their way down or see 
a flower bed again. Getting tired and 
chilly, they alight on the snow fields and 
glaciers, attracted perhaps by the glare, 
take cold, and die. There they lie as if 
on a white cloth purposely outspread for 
them, and the dun sparrows find them 
a rich and varied repast requiring no 
pursuit, — bees and butterflies on ice, 
and many spicy beetles, a perpetual feast, 
on tables big for guests so small, and in 
vast banqueting halls ventilated by cool 
breezes that ruffle the feathers of the 
fairy brownies. Happy fellows, no rivals 
come to dispute possession with them. 
No other birds, not even hawks, as far 
as I have noticed, live so high. They 
see people so seldom, they flutter around 
the explorer with the liveliest curiosity, 
and come down a little way, sometimes 
nearly a mile, to meet him and conduct 
him into their icy homes. 
When I was exploring the Merced 
group, climbing up the grand canon be¬ 
tween the Merced and Red mountains 
into the fountain amphitheatre of an an- 
