THE WATER-OUZEL XIV THE WILD SHEEP XV IN THE SIERRA FOOT-HILLS XVI

SUGAR PINE TRYING THE BOW A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT THE OUZEL AT HOME YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND

SUGAR PINE TRYING THE BOW A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT THE OUZEL AT HOME YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND

SUGAR PINE TRYING THE BOW A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT THE OUZEL AT HOME YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND

SUGAR PINE TRYING THE BOW A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS WATER-OUZEL DIVING AND FEEDING ONE OF THE LATE-SUMMER FEEDING-GROUNDS OF THE OUZEL OUZEL ENTERING A WHITE CURRENT THE OUZEL AT HOME YOSEMITE BIRDS, SNOW-BOUND

The roaring river fills all the arching way with impressively loud reverberating music, which is sweetened at times by the ouzel, a bird that is not afraid to go wherever a stream may go, and to sing wherever a stream sings.

Happily the ouzel and the old familiar robin are here to sing us welcome, and azure daisies beam with trustfulness and sympathy, enabling us to feel something of Nature's love even here, beneath the gaze of her coldest rocks.

After indulging here in a dozing, shimmering lake-rest, the happy stream sets forth again, warbling and trilling like an ouzel, ever delightfully confiding, no matter how dark the way; leaping, gliding, hither, thither, clear or foaming: manifesting the beauty of its wildness in every sound and gesture.

Insects now enrich the air, frogs pipe cheerily in the shallows, soon followed by the ouzel, which is the first bird to visit a glacier lake, as the sedge is the first of plants.

A few ducks are usually seen sailing on the lake, apparently more for pleasure than anything else, and the ouzels at the head of the rapids sing always; while robins, grosbeaks, and the Douglas squirrels are busy in the groves, making delightful company, and intensifying the feeling of grateful sequestration without ruffling the deep, hushed calm and peace.

The ouzels pass it by, and so do the ducks; they could hardly get into it if they would, without plumping straight down inside the circling trees.

I have never yet met ducks in any of the lakes of this kind, but the ouzel is never wanting where the feeding-streams are perennial.

But the love-songs of the ouzels and the love-looks of the daisies gradually reassure us, and manifest the warm fountain humanity that pervades the coldest and most solitary of them all.

But as soon as the winter clouds have bloomed, and the mountain treasuries are once more replenished with snow, the voices of the streams and ouzels increase in strength and richness until the flood season of early summer.

I found no great difficulty, however, in making my way to a certain ripple on the river where one of my ouzels lived.

It did not occur to me in the midst of the excitement of other observations to look for the ouzels, but I doubt not they were singing straight on through it all, regarding the terrible rock-thunder as fearlessly as they do the booming of the waterfalls.

One stormy morning in winter when the Merced River was blue and green with unmelted snow, I observed one of my ouzels perched on a snag out in the midst of a swift-rushing rapid, singing cheerily, as if everything was just to his mind; and while I stood on the bank admiring him, he suddenly plunged into the sludgy current, leaving his song abruptly broken off.

Furthermore, at certain hours of the day, when the sunshine is poured down at the required angle, the whole mass of the spray enveloping the fairy establishment is brilliantly irised; and it is through so glorious a rainbow atmosphere as this that some of our blessed ouzels obtain their first peep at the world.

Ouzels seem so completely part and parcel of the streams they inhabit, they scarce suggest any other origin than the streams themselves; and one might almost be pardoned in fancying they come direct from the living waters, like flowers from the ground.

On one occasion, while rambling along the shore of a mountain lake, where the birds, at least those born that season, had never seen a man, I sat down to rest on a large stone close to the water's edge, upon which it seemed the ouzels and sandpipers were in the habit of alighting when they came to feed on that part of the shore, and some of the other birds also, when they came down to wash or drink.

She would walk up the creek back of the house, sit by the hour near the pool where the water came slithering down over a green and grey boulder, watching for the water-ouzel, entertained in an absent sort of way by his bobbings and flirtings and snatches of song.

SONGS FROM 'THE WATER-BABIES' THE TIDE RIVER Clear and cool, clear and cool, By laughing shallow, and dreaming pool; Cool and clear, cool and clear, By shining shingle, and foaming wear; Under the crag where the ouzel sings, And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings, Undefiled, for the undefiled; Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.

He will see ravens and hawks about the crags, and about the river half covered in summer with floating pond-weed, watercress, and the broad leaves of the yellow lily, he will notice many a water-ouzel bobbing with white breast, water-hens gliding from bank to bank, merry bands of divers, and the brilliant blue gleam of the passing kingfisher, which here is allowed to fish in peace, like the otter.

The throstle, the red-wing, and the fieldfare, which migrated in March, now return; and the ring-ouzel arrives from the Welsh and Scottish Alps to winter in more sheltered situations.

And all the fields thereof, Where daffodils flaunt everywhere And ouzels chant of love, Lest we attain the Middle-Land, Whence clouded well-springs rise, And vipers from a slimy strand Lift glittering cold eyes.