Show DOORS IN THE WEST Sketches of Natural History in the Rocky Mountain Plateau Edi ed by Dr J. H. Pr ol Study in the University of I. WESTERN MARSH I ROCK THE AZTEC In most of the canyons of the Wasatch mountains may be heard the lively chatter and persistent jolly little songs of grayish brown quite small from to inches in length but noisy enough for twice that They flit cheerily from bush to tree to always singing a bright but scarcely musical They are just bubbling over with good and their notes fairly tumble over each so fast are they poured One pair I found nesting in a knot hole in a quaking-aspen another pair in a switch-box of the electric railway The nest was made of twigs and lined with It contained five pinkish white which were spotted with Their chatter seems lo be a torrent of scolding and it is further accentuated when you approach the A fortnight later I watched with absorbed interest how the knot-hole pair approached the nest in order to feed the They flew from tree to tree In such a manner as to mislead the When they carried the insect food to that dark spot upon the white bark of the they flew so and returned to quickly that the feeding was over almost before one was aware of what had taken It was one day in June when a party of us spent the day ia Emigration canyon that we in one of the switch-lores along the railroad the nest of a pair of these Pretty little blown Aztec Inside the and reached an opening on the the industrious and charming bird of small twigs as the couple had arranged a basis of their and had loosely lined it with Five brown-spotted eggs were the treasures that competed the furnishing of this center of l which the undeterred by our made fre- ln order to begin the serious and strenuous work hooding into perfect life the contents of their Jt was a pretty and who then and there not to dis- Secret careful of this happy couple were very their labors nor to vex them by remaining long near their and Birds Were of r weeks and again came the opportunity v this spot of the b nest and the winds are at the had bean was and Its contents th the sparkling song of the M M when to wont as she was v resound I i 7 the of of of L T the that had recently added so much much to to the beauty and interest of this romantic ByS Had Been There- n Our little winged friends had A quarryman told us me Some boys had discovered the secret of the little In eager curiosity they had uncovered the box and profaned its sacred They lifted out the three newly hatched and almost and then interfered with the eggs about ready to burst into newness of I MARSH ROCK half in they began to toss up the in anxious bird parents that all the order to draw nearer the for the lives of while and screamed and pleaded their little From Bad to meant no but finally had probably At first the toys and were dropped featherless birds the bravado than with hey com- and Sp more in remorse sorry work by carrying off the bird which P cries of whose pitiful soon Then Then i the v parent distress the boys did not j m presence to try bird allies providing their thankless nu did Mt figh t a n t aid them in their it The Pity of lt- solitary md and ex exceptional p the Had this been a space this chapter o y to but it we r alone it an T and the regrets of those who the sentiments of nare replace the ele-would prefer to see ki boyhood and mental savage of c p youth the upon out it bears equally V IT I of- our The boy who robs nests is brutalized and hardened by the the community that fails to protect its will to grief from the ever-increasing insect hordes' that destroy our for only the birds can hold insects in THE CANYON The tragedy of the nest of the Aztec wren is not a solitary or rare will be said one person on hearing of the massacre of the wren family in Emigration But if boys would be boys thoughtful boys I should not now have to tell of another wren tragedy this one in City Creek Not long on a sunny spring another pair of wrens were These were not less but were far more musical than the for these were glorious singers called canyon On a high barely half a mile up City Creek not so far as the first city water the air has resounded in the spring several years past with the music of a pair of these which have regularly made their nest in that I did not try to locate the though it was probably in some crevice of the steep near the little bird sang so The song could be heard distinctly for a quarter of a mile in the and possessed a and greatly varied Coues has given the following description of the song of this remember the within the in the canyon wren we have the lute within the rift curious little animated utterly insignificant in size and yet fit to make the welkin ring with This bird-note is one of the most characteristic sounds in matches it and its power to impress the hearer increases as usually the volume of the sound is strengthened by reverberation through the deep and sinuous echoed from side to side of the massive perpendicular walls till it gradually dies away in the No technical description would be likely to express the character of these nor explain the indelible impression they make upon one who hears them for the first time amid the wild and desolate scenes to which they are a lit The song is perfectly it is merely a succession of single whistling each separate and beginning high in the scale as the bird can and regularly descending the gamut as long as the bird's breath holds or until it reaches the lowest note the is capable of These notes are and of a peculiarly resonant they are uttered with startling and I sometimes fancied I detected a shade of as secure in its own rocky the bird were disposed to mock the discomforts and anxieties a journey through hostile Are City Creek It was this gifted the canyon wren another species of that interesting clan which made every morning there tinkle with bird music of the highest Have you ever as you go through one of our a bell-like followed by a series of piccolo notes running down the scale with some grace notes thrown the melody fairly bubbling over with joyous If it is the song of the canyon which loves to buiM not far from among the cliffs and steep banks of our mountain It was this gifted singer a species entirely western that last with a bird music so exquisite as to almost daily delighted the writer during morning strolls into the song fully justified the description just quoted from the The next the bird music was and only the city's sounds and the distant droning hum of men now reach the ear as one walks into the Cit Creek The birds are wont to return from year to year to their old nesting This pair can not now be located about their Have the boys reached them with gun or There is little doubt of and the solitude to the folly and shame of the entire community in failing to protect the birds from slaughter by youthful candidates for schools and Train the For it can hardly be that these boys have not been told not to Kill the we suppose they all attend the public the trouble is that they have not been 10 brothers of the Solomon did not say that if we the but that if we in the way it should it would follow our It counts little to tell and to training which means direct and practice is Until our schools train the pupils to observe the birds and to note their marvelous modes of talk to them will be mostly in and until our actually enforce the law that forbids the possession of guns and flippers by we cannot hope to have Why not appoint a bird day in the Sunday Why not make a state matter of this An appeal to the state game to the to the superintendent of public instruction would not be in Meantime the Sunday schools could be getting Talks on with references to the kinds to be seen by the will soon kindle such interest that the problem of conserving this great resource the native birds will be far less difficult than it is at Ways the All wrens I suppose to be the same and cheery little fellows as the But some homes among the some live in the and others rear their broods in the where the cat-tails stand knee deep in the and only by boat or wing can the home of these busy midgets be And you find a says Professor you have music in all the wild abandon of the great Sometimes they seem to want to sing so rapidly that the notes roll and tumble all the while the little musician is keeping up a ceaseless He found the marsh wrens nesting in numbers in the tules and rushes along Bear river in we would wade out to a patch of cat-tails or we were sure to te rewarded by finding from one to a dozen The birds bring together several fasten them and build their nests in the crotch thus formed The nest was always built of leaves of the mosses and finer and usually with a doorway that would be placed that one would have to play hide-and-seek to find When we approached the nests the birds sang at us and around in a perfect ecstasy of Rock The rock wren is a bird about the length of the English but It inhabits the whole of the Rocky Mountain especially the rocky and barren singing a tinkling song that seems to harmonize with the gritty granites among which it lives pale grayish coloration is a perfect rock but there is a mark on the tail The bill is as long as the down-curved at wing longer than the which is with broad Upper parts dull grayish finely flecked with black and white tail ceded and tipped with and with a band of black near i the under parts dull chest finely These i pretty birds I have often watched in summer towards the rim of the Great and have often been im- pressed by the perfect blending of their colors with the 1 m and and they make their homes valley of the Snake in I nesting along the inaccessible ledges of the lava r the vast and remarkable gorge cut by this approaching their neUs seems Method even more adro d misleading than that of the Aztec a The Cactus inhabitant of the cactus region is large in size for being from 8 to 9 inches and is a conspicuous regions as it sings on top of bird in these a bare branch with tail It nests and among bead up yucca or The white throat and breast are heavily marked with black is buffy brown with linear upper parts streaked on tack with black and tail with middle feathers spotted with outside feather barred with The Marsh The marsh wrens are among the busiest and noisiest of the Many times have I followed a pair through the and led on by the continuous chattering of the invisibles mites as they kept out of sight only a rod In this species the bill is shorter than the the plumage the top of the head and the back streaked with black and under parts whiter on throat and It is 4 to 4 inches |