larm-call! It is no "chewink" at all, but almost as close a
reproduction of a cat's mew as is the catbird's well-known call. Such
crosses and anomalies does this country produce!

On the arid mountain sides among the stunted bushes, cactus plants,
sand, and rocks, this quaint bird makes his home, coming down into the
valleys to drink at the tinkling brooks and trill his roundelays. Many,
many times, as I was following a deep fissure in the mountains, his
ditty came dripping down to me from some spot far up the steep mountain
side--a little cascade of song mingling with the cascades of the brooks.
The nests are usually placed under a bush on the sides of the mesas and
mountains.

And would you believe it? Colorado furnishes another towhee, though why
he should have been put into the Pipilo group by the ornithologists is
more than I can tell at this moment. He has no analogue in the East.
True, he is a bird of the bushes, running sometimes like a little deer
from one clump to another; but if you should see him mount a boulder or
a bush, and hear him sing his rich, theme-like, finely modulated song,
you would aver that he is closer kin to the thrushes or thrashers than
to the towhees. There is not the remotest suggestion of the towhee
minstrelsy in his prolonged and well-articulated melody. It would be
difficult to find a finer lyrist among the mountains.

But, hold! I have neglected to introduce this pretty Mozart of the West.
He is known by an offensive and inapt title--the green-tailed towhee.
Much more appropriately might he be called the chestnut-crowned towhee,
for his cope is rich chestnut, and the crest is often held erect, making
him look quite cavalier-like. It is the most conspicuous part of his
toilet. His upper parts are grayish-green, becoming slightly deeper
green on the tail, from which fact he derives his common name. His white
throat and chin are a further diagnostic mark. The bright yellow of the
edge of the wings, under coverts and axillaries is seldom seen, on
account of the extreme wariness of the bird.

In most of the dry and bushy places I found him at my elbow--or, rather,
some distance away, but in evidence by his mellifluous song. Let me
enumerate the localities in which I found my little favorite: Forty
miles out on the plain among some bushes of a shallow dip; among the
foothills about Colorado Springs and Manitou; on many of the open bushy
slopes along the cog-road leading to Pike's Peak, b