A ROCKY MOUNTAIN LAKE

"You will find a small lake just about a mile from town. Follow the road leading out this way"—indicating the direction—"until you come to a red gate. The lake is private property, but you can go right in, as you don't shoot. No one will drive you out. I think you will find it an interesting place for bird study."

The foregoing is what my landlord told me one morning at Buena Vista. Nor did I waste time in finding the way to the lake, a small sheet of water, as clear as crystal, embowered in the lovely park lying between towering, snow-clad mountains. One might almost call the spot a bird's Arcadia. In no place, in all my tramping among the Rockies, did I find so many birds in an equal area.

In the green, irrigated meadow bordering one side of the sheet of water, I was pleased to find a number of Brewer's blackbirds busily gathering food in the wet grass for their young. And who or what are Brewer's blackbirds? In the East, the purple and bronzed grackles, or crow blackbirds, are found in great abundance; but in Colorado these birds are replaced by Brewer's blackbirds, which closely resemble their eastern kinsfolk, although not quite so large. The iridescence of the plumage is somewhat different in the two species, but in both the golden eye-balls show white at a distance. When I first saw a couple of Brewer's blackbirds stalking featly about on a lawn at Manitou, digging worms and grubs out of the sod, I simply put them down in my note-book as bronzed or purple grackles—an error that had to be corrected afterwards, on more careful examination. The mistake shows how close is the resemblance between the two species.

The Brewer division of the family breed on the plains and in the mountains, to an altitude of ten thousand feet, always selecting marshy places for their early summer home; then in August and September, the breeding season over, large flocks of old and young ascend to the regions above the timber-line, about thirteen thousand feet above sea-level, where they swarm over the grassy but treeless mountain sides in search of food. In October they retire to the plains, in advance of the austere weather of the great altitudes, and soon the majority of them hie to a blander climate than Colorado affords in winter.

Still more interesting to me was the large colony of yellow-headed blackbirds that had taken up their residence in the rushes and flags of the upper end of the lake. These birds are not such exclusive westerners as their ebon-hued cousins just described; for I found them breeding at Lake Minnetonka, near Minneapolis, Minnesota, a few years ago, and they sometimes straggle, I believe, as far east as Ohio. A most beautiful bird is this member of the IcteridÆ family, a kind of Beau Brummel among his fellows, with his glossy black coat and rich yellow—and even orange, in highest feather—mantle covering the whole head, neck, and breast, and a large white, decorative spot on the wings, showing plainly in flight. He is the handsomest blackbird with which I am acquainted.

At the time of my visit to the lake, the latter part of June, the yellow-heads were busy feeding their young, many of which had already left the nest. From the shore, I could see dozens of them clinging to the reeds, several of which they would grasp with the claws of each foot, their little legs straddled far apart, the flexile rushes spreading out beneath their weight. There the youngsters perched, without seeming to feel any discomfort from their strained position. And what a racket they made when the parent birds returned from an excursion to distant meadows and lawns, with bill-some tidbits! They were certainly a hungry lot of bairns. When I waded out into the shallow water toward their rushy home, the old birds became quite uneasy, circling about above me like the red-wings, and uttering a harsh blackbird "chack," varied at intervals by a loud, and not unmusical, chirp.

You should see the nest of the yellow-head. It is really a fine structure, showing no small amount of artistic skill—a plaited cup, looking almost as if it had been woven by human hands, the rushes of the rim and sides folding the supporting reeds in their loops. Thus the nest and its reedy pillars are firmly bound together. I waded out to a clump of rushes and found one nest with three eggs in its softly felted cup—the promise, no doubt, of a belated, or possibly a second, brood.

This mountain lake was also the abode of a number of species of ducks, not all of which could be identified, on account of the distance they constantly put between themselves and the observer. Flocks of them floated like light, feathered craft upon the silvery bosom of the lake, now pursuing one another, now drifting lazily, now diving, and anon playing many attractive gambols.

One of the most curious ducks I have ever seen was the ruddy duck, called in the scientific manuals Erismatura rubida. As I sat on a rock on the shore, watching the aquatic fowl, one of the male ruddy ducks, accompanied by three or four females, swam out from the reeds into an open space where I could see him plainly with my field-glass. A beautiful picture he presented, as he glided proudly about on the water, surrounded by his devoted harem. Imagine, if you can, how regal he must have appeared—his broad, flat bill, light blue, widening out at the commissure, and seeming to shade off into the large white cheeks, which looked like snowy puffballs on the sides of his head; his crown, black and tapering; his neck, back, and sides, a rich, glossy brownish-red; his lower parts, "silky, silvery white, 'watered' with dusky, yielding, gray undulations"; and his wing-coverts and jauntily perked-up tail, black. If that was not a picture worthy of an artist's brush I have never seen one in the outdoor world.

No less quaint was his conduct. That he was proud and self-conscious, no one seeing him could doubt; and it was just as plain from his consequential mien, that he was posing before his train of plainly clad wives, who, no doubt, looked upon him as the greatest "catch" of the lake. Unlike most ducks, in swimming this haughty major carries his head erect, and even bent backward at a sharp angle; and his short tail is cocked up and bent forward, so that his glossy back forms a graceful half-circle or more, and does not slope downward, as do the backs of most ducks on the water.

Of all the odd gestures, this fellow's carried off the palm. He would draw his head up and back, then thrust it forward a few inches, extend his blue bill in a horizontal line, and at the same time emit a low, coarse squawk that I could barely hear. Oddly enough, all the females, staid as they were, imitated their liege lord's deportment. It was their way of protesting against my ill-bred intrusion into their demesne.

Presently a second male came out into the open space, accompanied by a retinue of wives, and then a third emerged, similarly attended. With this there was a challenging among the rivals that was interesting to witness; they fairly strutted about on the water, now advancing, now retreating, and occasionally almost, but never quite, closing in combat. Sometimes one would pursue another for a rod or more, in a swift rush that would make the spray fly and cut a swath on the smooth bosom of the lake.

Several coots now appeared on the scene. Between them and the ruddy ducks there seemed to be a feud of more or less intensity, each being on the offensive or the defensive as the exigencies of naval warfare demanded. Once I was moved to laughter as a coot made a fierce dash toward one of the ducks, and was almost upon her, and I thought she was destined to receive a severe trouncing, when she suddenly dodged her pursuer by diving. He just as suddenly gave up the chase, looking as if it were a case of "sour grapes," anyway.

After watching the antics of these birds for a long time, I turned my attention to another pretty scene,—a pair of coots leading their family of eight or ten little ones out into the clear area from their hiding-place among the reeds, presenting a picture of unruffled domestic bliss. How sweet and innocent the little coots were! Instead of the black heads and necks of their parents, and the white bills and frontal bones, these parts were tinted with red, which appeared quite bright and gauze-like in the sunshine.

The process of feeding the juvenile birds was interesting. The parents would swim about, then suddenly dip their heads into the water, or else dive clear under, coming up with slugs in their bills. Turning to the youngsters, which were always close upon their heels—or perhaps I would better say their tails—they would hold out their bills, when the little ones would swim up and pick off the toothsome morsel. It must not be supposed that the bantlings opened their mouths, as most young birds do, to receive the tidbits. No, indeed! That is not coot vogue. The little ones picked the insects from the sides of the papa's or mamma's beak, turning their own little heads cunningly to one side as they helped themselves to their luncheon.

The other waterfowl of the lake acted in an ordinary way, and therefore need no description. It was strange, however, that this was the only lake seen in all my Rocky Mountain touring where I found waterfowl. At Seven Lakes, Moraine Lake, and others in the vicinity of Pike's Peak, not a duck, crane, or coot was to be seen; and the same was true of Cottonwood Lake, twelve miles from Buena Vista, right in the heart of the rugged mountains.

Two facts may account for the abundance of birds at the little lake near Buena Vista; first, here they were protected from gunners and pot hunters by the owner, whose residence commanded a full view of the whole area; and, second, large spaces of the upper end of the lake was thickly grown with flags and rushes, which were cut off from the shore by a watery space of considerable breadth. In this place these birds found coverts from enemies and suitable sites for their nests.