He is the humming bird of the waters, loving rocky ripple slopes and sheets of foam as a bee loves flowers, as a lark loves sunshine and meadows. Among all the mountain birds, none has cheered me so much in my lonely wanderings. For both in winter and in summer he sings, and cheerily. While water sings, so must he, in heat or cold, calm or storm; low in the drought of summer and the drought of winter, but never silent. As for weather, dark days and bright days are the same to him. The voices of most song birds, however joyous, suffer a long winter eclipse, but the ouzel sings on through all the seasons and every kind of storm. No need of spring sunshine to thaw his song, for it never freezes. Never shall you hear anything wintry from his warm breast; no wavering notes between sorrow and joy. His mellow, fluty voice is ever tuned to gladness. One cold winter morning I sallied forth to see what I might learn and enjoy. The loose snow was already over five feet deep on the meadows, but I made my way to a certain ripple on the river where one of my ouzels lives. He was at home, busily gleaning his breakfast among the pebbles, apparently unaware of anything extraordinary in the weather. Presently he flew out to a stone against which the icy current was beating, and turning his back to the wind, sang as delightfully as a lark in springtime. I found a few sparrows busy at the feet of the larger trees gleaning seeds and insects, joined now and then by a robin. A solitary gray eagle was braving the storm on the top of a tall pine stump. He was standing bolt upright, with his back to the wind, a tuft of snow piled on his square shoulders,—a monument of passive endurance. Every snow-bound bird seemed more or less uncomfortable, if not in positive distress. Not one cheerful note came from a single bill. Their patient suffering offered a striking contrast to the spontaneous glad ness of the ouzel, who could no more help exhaling sweet song than a rose sweet fragrance. The songs of the ouzel are exceedingly difficult of description. Though I have been acquainted with my favorite ten years, and have heard him sing nearly every day, I still detect notes and strains that seem new to me. Nearly all of his music is sweet and tender, flowing from his round breast like water over the smooth lip of a pool, and then breaking into a sparkling foam of melodious notes. The ouzel never sings in chorus with other birds, but only with the streams. I have often observed him singing in the midst of beaten spray, his music completely buried beneath the water's roar. Yet I knew he was surely singing, by his gestures and the movements of his bill. His food consists of all kinds of water insects, which in summer are chiefly found along shallow margins. Here he wades about, ducking his head under water and deftly turning over pebbles and fallen leaves with his bill. He seldom chooses to go into deep water, where he has to use his wings in diving. During the winter, when the streams are chilled nearly to the freezing point, so that the snow falling into them is not wholly dissolved, then he seeks the deeper portions of the rivers where he may dive to clear water. One stormy morning in winter when the Merced River was blue and green with unmelted snow, I observed an ouzel perched on a snag in the midst of a swift-rushing rapid. He was singing cheerily, as if everything was just to his mind. While I stood on the bank admiring him, he saddenly plunged into the current, leaving his song abruptly broken off. After feeding a minute or two at the bottom, and when one would suppose that he must surely be swept far down stream, he emerged just where he went down. Alighting on the same snag, he showered the water beads from his feathers, and continued his unfinished song. The ouzel's nest is one of the most extraordinary pieces of bird architecture I ever saw, odd and novel in design, and in every way worthy of the genius of the little builder. It is about a foot in diameter, round in outline, with a neatly arched opening near the bottom, somewhat like an oldfashioned brick oven. It is built chiefly of the green and yellow mosses that cover the rocks and drift logs near the waterfalls. These are deftly interwoven into a charming little hut, and so situated that many of the outer mosses continue to grow as if they had not been plucked. The site chosen for the curious mansion is usually some little rock shelf within reach of the lighter spray of a waterfall, so that its walls are kept green and growing. In these moss huts three or four eggs are laid, white, like foam bubbles. And well may the little birds hatched from them sing water songs, for they hear them all their lives. I have often observed the young just out of the nest making their odd gesture, and seeming in every way as much at home as their experienced parents. No amount of familiarity with people and their ways seems to change them in the least. Even so far north as icy Alaska, I have found my glad singer. One cold day in November I was exploring the glaciers between Mount Fairweather and the Stickeen River. After trying in vain to force a way through the icebergs, I was weary and baffled, and sat resting in my canoe. While I thus lingered, drifting with the bergs, I suddenly heard the wellknown whir of an ouzel's wings, and looking up, saw my little comforter coming straight across the ice from the shore. In a second or two he was with me, flying around my head with a happy salute, as if to say: "Cheer up, old friend, you see I am here, and all's well." Then he flew back to the shore, alighted on the topmost jag of a stranded iceberg, and began to nod and bow as though he were on one of his favorite bowlders in the midst of a sunny Sierra cascade. Such, then, is our little water ouzel, beloved of every one who is so fortunate as to know him. Tracing on strong wing every curve of the swiftest torrent, not fearing to follow it through its darkest gorges and its coldest snow tunnels; acquainted with every waterfall, he echoes its divine music. -John Muir Questions: Compare this selection with Audubon's The Passenger Pigeon. Which do you prefer? How would Audubon have written The Water Ouzel? How would Muir have written The Passenger Pigeon? Pleasure Reading: Muir's The Mountains of California Young's Alaska Days With John Muir Miller's Bird Ways Walker's Our Birds and their Nestlings CALIFORNIA'S CUP OF GOLD1 HE golden poppy is God's gold, THE The gold that lifts, nor weighs us down; The gold that knows no miser's hold, The gold that banks not in the town, What beggar hath not gold to burn! -Joaquin Miller 'From Joaquin Miller's Poems. Copyrighted by Whitaker & RayWiggin Company. RIP VAN WINKLE (Washington Irving wrote two stories which have become famous, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. We have made the acquaintance of Ichabod Crane, Katrina Van Tassel, and Brom Bones. We are now to include among our friends Rip Van Winkle, Dame Van Winkle, Wolf, and Nicholas Vedder. Capital stories these are! In both of them we feel Irving's delight in poking fun at the customs, beliefs, and superstitions of the early Dutch settlers of New York and their descendants. The world owes much to Washington Irving. For he was a man who made two smiles grow where only one grew before.) WH HOEVER has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill Mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but sometimes when the rest of the landscape is cloudless they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory. At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists in the early time of the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant (may he rest in peace!), and there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland, |