nd over and pull down a tall sapling, to despoil it
of its foliage.

In a pasture such as I have described, on the western slope of one of
the Rocky Mountains, desolate and forbidding though it looked, many
hours of last summer's May and June "went their way," if not

"As softly as sweet dreams go down the night,"

certainly with interest and pleasure to two bird-students whose ways I
have sometimes chronicled.

Most conspicuous, as we toiled upward toward our breezy pasture, was a
bird whose chosen station was a fence--a wire fence at that. He was a
tanager; not our brilliant beauty in scarlet and black, but one far more
gorgeous and eccentric in costume, having, with the black wings and tail
of our bird, a breast of shining yellow and a cap of crimson. His
occupation on the sweet May mornings that he lingered with us, on his
way up the mountains for the summer, was the familiar one of getting his
living, and to that he gave his mind without reserve. Not once did he
turn curious eyes upon us as we sauntered by or rested awhile to watch
him. Eagerly his pretty head turned this way and that, but not for us;
it was for the winged creatures of the air he looked, and when one that
pleased his fancy fluttered by he dashed out and secured it, returning
to a post or the fence just as absorbed and just as eager for the next
one. Every time he alighted it was a few feet farther down the fence,
and thus he worked his way out of our sight, without seeming aware of
our existence.

This was not stupidity on the part of the crimson-head, nor was it
foolhardiness; it was simply trust in his guardian, for he had one,--one
who watched every movement of ours with close attention, whose vigilance
was never relaxed, and who appeared, when we saw her, to be above the
need of food. A plain personage she was, clad in modest, dull
yellow,--the female tanager. She was probably his mate; at any rate, she
gradually followed him down the fence, keeping fifteen or twenty feet
behind him, all the time with an eye on us, ready to give warning of the
slightest aggressive movement on our part. It would be interesting to
know how my lord behaves up in those sky-parlors where their summer
homes are made. No doubt he is as tender and devoted as most of his race
(all his race, I would say, if Mr. Torrey had not shaken our faith in
the ruby-throat), and I have no doubt that the little red-heads in the
nest will be well looked after and fed by their fl