On the mountain side forming the descent to Moraine Lake a flock of Clark's nutcrackers were flying about in the pine woods, giving expression to their feelings in a great variety of calls, some of them quite strident. A little junco came in sight by the side of the trail, and hopped about on the ground, and I was surprised to note a reddish patch ornamenting the centre of his back. Afterwards I learned that it was the gray-headed junco, which is distinctly a western species, breeding among the mountains of Colorado. Thrashing about among some dead boles, and making a great to-do, were a pair of small woodpeckers, which closely resembled the well-known downies of our eastern longitudes. I suppose them to have been their western representatives, which are known, according to Mr. Aiken and Professor Cooke, as Batchelder's woodpecker. Near the same place I saw a second pair of mountain bluebirds, flitting about somewhat nervously, and uttering a gentle sigh at intervals; but as evening was now rapidly approaching, I felt the need of finding lodging for the night, and could not stop to hunt for their nest.
Faring down the mountain side to the lake, I circled around its lower end until I came to the cottage of the family who have the care of the reservoirs that supply the three towns at the foot of the mountains with water fresh from the snow-fields. Here, to my intense relief, I was able to secure lodging and board as long as I desired to remain.
I enjoyed the generous hospitality offered me for two nights and considerably more than one day. It was a genuine retreat, right at the foot of a tall mountain, embowered in a grove of quaking asps. Several persons from Colorado Springs, one of them a professor of the college, were spending their outing at the cottage, and a delightful fellowship we had, discussing birds, literature, and mountain climbing.
After resting awhile, I strolled up the valley to listen to the vesper concert of the birds, and a rich one it was. The western robins were piping their blithesome "Cheerilies," Audubon's warblers were trilling in the pines, and, most of all--but here I had one of the most gratifying finds in all my mountain quest. It will perhaps be remembered that the white-crowned sparrows, so plentiful in the upper valley, were not to be seen in the valley of Moraine Lake. Still there were compensations in this cloistered dip among the towering mountains; the mountain hermit thrushes--sometimes called Audubon's thrushes--found the sequestered valley precisely to their liking, and on the evening in question I saw them and heard their pensive cadences for the first time. Such exquisite tones, which seemed to take vocal possession of the vale and the steep, pine-clad mountain side, it has seldom been my good fortune to hear. Scores of the birds were singing simultaneously, some of their voices pitched high in the scale and others quite low, as though they were furnishing both the air and the contralto of the chorus. It was my first opportunity to listen to the songs of any of the several varieties of hermit thrushes, and I freely confess that I came, a willing captive, under the spell of their minstrelsy, so sweet and sad and far away, and yet so rich in vocal expression. In the latter part of the run, which is all too brief, there is a strain which bears close resemblance to the liquid melody of the eastern wood-thrush, but the opening notes have a pathetic quality all their own. Perhaps Charles G. D. Roberts can give some idea of one's feelings at a time like this: