led.

The pretty couch contained four juvenile juncos covered only with down,
and yet, in spite of their extreme youth, their foreheads and lores
showed black, and their backs a distinctly reddish tint, so early in
life were they adopting the pattern worn by their parents. The
persistency of species in the floral and faunal realms presents some
hard nuts for the evolutionist to crack. But that is an excursus, and
would lead us too far afield. This was the first junco's nest I had ever
found, and no one can blame me for feeling gratified with the
discovery. The gray-headed juncos were very abundant in the Rockies, and
are the only species at present known to breed in the State of Colorado.
They are differentiated from the common slate-colored snowbird by their
ash-gray suits, modestly decorated with a rust-colored patch on the
back.

It was now far past noon, and beginning to feel weak with hunger, I
reluctantly said adieu to the junco and her brood, and hurried on to the
Halfway House, where a luncheon of sandwiches, pie and coffee
strengthened me for the remainder of my tramp down the mountain to
Manitou. That was a walk which lingers like a Greek legend in my memory
on account of--well, that is the story that remains to be told.

On a former visit to the Halfway House I was mentally knocked off my
feet by several glimpses of a woodpecker which was entirely new to me,
and of whose existence I was not even aware until this gorgeous
gentleman hove in sight. He was the handsomest member of the _Picidae_
family I have ever seen--his upper parts glossy black, some portions
showing a bluish iridescence; his belly rich sulphur yellow, a bright
red median stripe on the throat, set in the midst of the black, looking
like a small necktie; two white stripes running along the side of the
head, and a large white patch covering the middle and greater
wing-coverts. Altogether, an odd livery for a woodpecker. Silently he
swung from bole to bole for a few minutes, and then disappeared.

Not until I reached my room in Manitou could I fix the bird's place in
the avicular system. By consulting Coues's _Key_ and Professor Cooke's
brochure on the _Birds of Colorado_, I found this quaintly costumed
woodpecker to be Williamson's sapsucker (_Sphyrapicus thyroideus_),
known only in the western part of the United States from the Rocky
Mountains to the Pacific coast. I now lingered in the beautiful pine
grove surrounding the Halfway House, ho