Part 31 (1/2)

In importance after the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs come the members of the sparrow family that inhabit the Tahoe region. The little black-headed s...o...b..rd, Thurber's junco, is the most common of all the Tahoe birds.

The thick-billed sparrow, a grayish bird with spotted breast and enormous bill is found on all the brushy hillsides and is noted for its glorious bursts of rich song.

Now and again one will see a flock of English sparrows, and the sweet-voiced song-sparrow endeavors to make up for the vulgarity of its English cousin by the delicate softness of its peculiar song.

Others of the family are the two purple finches (reddish birds), the pine-finch, very plain and streaked, the green-tailed towhee, with its cat-like call, and the white-crowned sparrow,--its sweetly melancholy song, ”Oh, dear me,” in falling cadence, is heard in every Sierran meadow.

The mountain song-sparrow, western lark, western chipping-fox, gold-finch, and house- and ca.s.sin-finches are seen. The fly-catchers are omnipresent in August, though their shy disposition makes them hard to identify. Hammond, olive-sided and western pewee are often seen, and at times the tall tree-tops are alive with kinglets.

Some visitors complain that they do not often see or hear the warblers, but in 1905, one bird-lover reported seven common representatives. She says:

The yellow bird was often heard and seen in the willows along the Lake. Late in August the shrubs on the sh.o.r.e were alive with the Audubon group, which is so abundant in the vicinity of Los Angeles all winter. Pileolated warblers, with rich yellow suits and black caps, hovered like hummers among the low shrubs in the woods. Now and then a Pacific yellow-throat sang his bewitching ”wichity wichity, wichity, wee.” Hermit and black-throated gray warblers were also recorded. The third week in August there was an extensive immigration of Macgillivray warblers. Their delicate gray heads, yellow underparts, and the bobbing movement of the tail, distinguished them from the others.

The water ouzel finds congenial habitat in the canyons of the Tahoe region, and the careful observer may see scores of them as he walks along the streams and by the cascades and waterfalls during a summer's season. At one place they are so numerous as to have led to the naming of a beautiful waterfall, Ouzel Falls, after them. Another bird is much sought after and can be seen and heard here, perhaps as often as any other place in the country. That is the hermit thrush, small, delicate, grayish, with spotted breast. The shyness of the bird is proverbial, and it frequents the deepest willow and aspen thickets.

Once heard, its sweet song can never be forgotten, and happy is he who can get near enough to hear it undisturbed. Far off, it is flute-like, pure and penetrating, though not loud. Gradually it softens until it sounds but as the faintest of tinkling bell-like notes, which die away leaving one with the a.s.surance that he has been hearing the song of the chief bird of the fairies, or of birds which accompany the heavenly lullabies of the mother angels putting their baby angels to sleep.

Cliff-swallows often nest on the high banks at Tahoe City, and a few have been seen nesting under the eaves of the store on the wharf. The nests of barn swallows also have been found under the eaves of the ice-house.

Nor must the exquisite hummers be overlooked. In Truckee Canyon, and near Tahoe Tavern they are quite numerous. They sit on the telephone wires and try to make you listen to their pathetic and scarcely discernible song, and as you sit on the seats at the Tavern, if you happen to have some bright colored object about you, especially red, they will flit to and fro eagerly seeking for the honey-laden flower that red ought to betoken.

Several times down Truckee Canyon I have seen wild canaries. They are rather rare, as are also the Louisiana tanager, most gorgeous of all the Tahoe birds, and the black-headed grosbeak.

Of the wrens, both the rock wren and the canyon wren are occasionally seen, the peculiar song of the latter bringing a thrill of cheer to those who are familiar with its falling chromatic scale.

Then there is the merry chick-a-dee-dee, the busy creepers, and the nut-hatches hunting for insects on the tree trunks.

The harsh note of the blue jay is heard from Tahoe Tavern, all around the Lake and in almost every wooded slope in the Sierras. He is a noisy, generally unlovable creature, and the terror of the small birds in the nesting season, because of his well-known habit of stealing eggs and young. At Tahoe Tavern, however, I found several of them that were shamed into friendliness of behavior, and astonis.h.i.+ng tameness, by the chipmunks. They would come and eat nuts from my fingers, and one of them several times came and perched upon my shoulder. There is also the grayish solitaire which looks very much like the mockingbird of less variable climes.

The foregoing account of the birds, which I submitted for revision to Professor Peter Frandsen, of the University of Nevada, called forth from him the following:

I have very little to add to this admirable bird account.

Besides the gulls, their black relatives, the swallow-like terns, are occasionally seen. The black-crowned night-heron is less common than the great blue heron. Clarke's crow is more properly called Clarke's nutcracker--a different genus. The road robin or chewink is fairly common in the thickets above the Lake. Nuttal's poor will, with its call of two syllables, is not infrequently heard at night. The silent mountain blue-bird, _sialia arctica_, is sometimes seen. So is the western warbling vireo. The solitary white-rumped shrike is occasionally met with in late summer. Owls are common but what species other than the western horned owl I do not know. Other rather rare birds are the beautiful lazuli bunting and the western warbling vireo. Among the wood-p.e.c.k.e.rs I have also noted the bristle-bellied wood-p.e.c.k.e.r, or Lewis's wood-p.e.c.k.e.r, Harris's wood-p.e.c.k.e.r, and the downy wood-p.e.c.k.e.r.

_ANIMALS_. These are even more numerous than the birds, though except to the experienced observer many of them are seldom noticed.

While racc.o.o.ns are not found on the eastern slopes of the High Sierras, or in the near neighborhood of the Lake, they are not uncommon on the western slopes, near the Rubicon and the headwaters of the various forks of the American and other near-by rivers.

Watson a.s.sured me that every fall he sees tracks on the Rubicon and in the h.e.l.l Hole region of very large mountain lions. They hide, among other places, under and on the limbs of the wild grapevines, which here grow to unusual size. In the fall of 1912 he saw some strange markings, and following them was led to a cl.u.s.ter of wild raspberry vines, among which was a dead deer covered over with fir boughs. In telling me the story he said:

I can generally read most of the things I see in the woods, but this completely puzzled me. I determined to find out all there was to be found. Close by I discovered the fir from which the boughs had been stripped. It was as if some one of giant strength had reached up to a height of seven or eight feet and completely stripped the tree of all its lower limbs.

Then I asked myself the question: ”Who's camping here?” I thought he had used these limbs to make a bed of. But there was no water nearby, and no signs of camping, so I saw that was a wrong lead. Then I noticed that the limbs were too big to be torn off by a man's hands, and there were blood stains all about. Then I found the fragments of a deer. ”Now,” I said to myself, ”I've got it. A bear has killed this deer and has eaten part of it and will come back for the rest.” You know a bear does this sometimes. But when I hunted for bear tracks there wasn't a sign of a bear. Then I a.s.sumed that some hunter had been along, killed a doe (contrary to law), had eaten what he could and hidden the rest, covering the hide with leaves and these branches. But then I knew a hunter would cut off those branches with a knife, and these were torn off. The blood spattered about, the torn-off boughs and the fact that there were no tracks puzzled me, and I felt there was a mystery and, probably, a tragedy.

But a day or two later I met a woodsman friend of mine, and I took him to the spot. He explained the whole thing clearly.

As soon as he saw it he said, ”That's a mountain-lion.”

”But,” said I, ”Where's his tracks?” ”He didn't make any,” he replied, ”he surprised the doe by crawling along the vines.

I've found calves and deer hidden like this before, and I've seen clear traces of the panthers, and once I watched one as he killed, ate and then hid his prey. But as you know he won't touch it after it begins to decompose, but a bear will. And that's the reason we generally think it is a bear that does the killing, when in reality it is a mountain lion who has had his fill and left the remains for other predatory animals, while he has gone off to hunt for a fresh kill.”

Occasionally sheep-herders report considerable devastations from mountain-lions and bear to the Forest Rangers. James Bryden, who grazes his sheep on the Tahoe reserve near Downieville, lost sixteen sheep in one night in July, 1911.