754 
BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
call it, heard last in timberline willows high in the mountains. The 
explanation was simple, however, for the season was said to be phe¬ 
nomenally cold and there had been a killing frost only two weeks pre¬ 
vious. With these conditions in the valley country, the mountains above 
would hardly attract their normal population. 
In the Pecos Mountains, where we found a family of White-crowns 
in the willows along Jack Creek, at 11,000 feet, the parents showed 
much solicitude near the nest. When perched conspicuously high on 
the willows, as if to attract attention to him, the guardian’s crest was 
raised and the median white stripe widened strikingly, but, when 
creeping about in the weeds near the nest, the crest was flat and the 
black and white lines of about equal width. While feeding young in 
early August, a parent was molting, which seemed good economy of 
time. At the foot of Pecos Baldy, where Mr. Ligon once camped, he 
was “wakened at daylight by the White-crown’s joyous notes,” and 
its beautiful songs were heard by us up to timberline. 
In the amphitheater of Wheeler or Taos Peak, at 11,400 feet, where 
we found a nest in a low spruce, the White-crowns were singing in the 
willows. They would fly down to the lake in the bottom of the amphi¬ 
theater for caddice flies, which were just coming out of their cases on the 
sides of stones along the water’s edge. When not picking the flies off 
the rocks, the birds would fly up into the air for them. Indeed, in other 
parts of the amphitheater, they were constantly jumping up into the 
air and chasing after insects; for the young even of seed eaters must have 
insect food. 
Two months later, on the Santa Clara River near Espanola, October 
17, 1904, when the weather was cold and cloudy with a strong wind 
blowing, Mr. Gaut found the sparrows seeking protection in the dense 
rabbit brush (Bigelovia) along an irrigating ditch, where they probably 
intended spending the night. He had also found them very numerous 
in the brushy spots along the canyons on the east side of the Manzano 
Mountains during the late fall of 1903, where in the middle of the day 
many of the little fellows would congregate about the mountain springs. 
In the season of song the White-crown, one of the handsomest of 
the sparrows, is among the most notable birds of the mountains, as¬ 
sociated as it is with cool, lush, forest-encircled mountain meadows, 
or with wide timberline views. Its song has been well described by 
Mr. Silloway as a “plaintive, wild wood melody, wir, dee-dle dee , dee dee 
the first syllable . . . long drawn out, and the dee-dle dee following 
remarkably sweet and liquid, vibrant and tinkling with mellowest 
silvery tone; the closing syllables more hurried and obscured” (1907, 
p. 53). Sometimes the first phrase suggests “high on the mountains” 
(then softly as if in meditative echo) “the mountains.” 
