Occasionally it will hop out upon the top of a bush in plain sight, and
remain for a few moments, just long enough for you to fix its identity
and note the character of its pleasing trill. Some of these points were
settled afterwards and not on the morning of my first meeting with the
chary little songster.

My plan for the day was to retrace my steps of the previous afternoon,
by climbing over the ridge into the upper valley and visiting the famous
Seven Lakes, which I had missed the day before through a miscalculation
in my direction. Clark's crows and the mountain jays were abundant on
the acclivities. One of the latter dashed out of a pine bush with a
clatter that almost raised the echoes, but, look as I would, I could
find no nest or young or anything else that would account for the
racket.

The Seven Lakes are beautiful little sheets of transparent water,
embosomed among the mountains in a somewhat open valley where there is
plenty of sunshine. They are visible from the summit of Pike's Peak,
from which distant viewpoint they sparkle like sapphire gems in a
setting of green. As seen from the Peak they appear to be quite close
together, and the land about them seems perfectly level, but when you
visit the place itself, you learn that some of them are separated from
the others by ridges of considerable height. Beautiful and sequestered
as the spot is, I did not find as many birds as I expected. Not a duck
or water bird of any kind was seen. Perhaps there is too much hunting
about the lakes, and, besides, winged visitors here would have
absolutely no protection, for the banks are free of bushes of any
description, and no rushes or flags grow in the shallower parts. On the
ridges and mountain sides the kinglets and hermit thrushes were
abundant, a robin was carolling, a Batchelder woodpecker chirped and
pounded in his tumultuous way, Clark's crows and several magpies lilted
about, while below the lakes in the copses the white-crowned sparrows
and green-tailed towhees held lyrical carnival, their sway disputed only
by the natty Wilson's warblers.

It was a pleasure to be alive and well in such a place, where one
breathed invigoration at every draught of the fresh, untainted mountain
air; nor was it less a delight to sit on the bank of one of the
transparent lakes and eat my luncheon and quaff from a pellucid spring
that gushed as cold as ice and as sweet as nectar from the sand, while
the white-crowned sparrows tri