n arrowy lines, launching in curves,
glinting deftly from side to side in sudden zigzags, and swirling in
giddy loops and spirals around the trunks, now on his haunches, now on
his head, yet ever graceful and performing all his feats of strength and
skill without apparent effort. One never tires of this bright spark of
life, the brave little voice crying in the wilderness. His varied, piney
gossip is as savory to the air as balsam to the palate. Some of his
notes are almost flutelike in softness, while others prick and tingle
like thistles. He is the mockingbird of squirrels, barking like a dog,
screaming like a hawk, whistling like a blackbird or linnet, while in
bluff, audacious noisiness he is a jay. A small thing, but filling and
animating all the woods.

Nor is there any lack of wings, notwithstanding few are to be seen on
short, noisy rambles. The ousel sweetens the shady glens and canyons
where waterfalls abound, and every grove or forest, however silent
it may seem when we chance to pay it a hasty visit, has its
singers,--thrushes, linnets, warblers,--while hummingbirds glint and
hover about the fringing masses of bloom around stream and meadow
openings. But few of these will show themselves or sing their songs to
those who are ever in haste and getting lost, going in gangs formidable
in color and accoutrements, laughing, hallooing, breaking limbs off
the trees as they pass, awkwardly struggling through briery thickets,
entangled like blue-bottles in spider webs, and stopping from time to
time to fire off their guns and pistols for the sake of the echoes,
thus frightening all the life about them for miles. It is this class of
hunters and travelers who report that there are "no birds in the woods
or game animals of any kind larger than mosquitoes."

Besides the singing birds mentioned above, the handsome Oregon grouse
may be found in the thick woods, also the dusky grouse and Franklin's
grouse, and in some places the beautiful mountain partridge, or quail.
The white-tailed ptarmigan lives on the lofty snow peaks above the
timber, and the prairie chicken and sage cock on the broad Columbia
plains from the Cascade Range back to the foothills of the Rocky
Mountains. The bald eagle is very common along the Columbia River, or
wherever fish, especially salmon, are plentiful, while swans, herons,
cranes, pelicans, geese, ducks of many species, and water birds in
general abound in the lake region, on the main streams, a