12 Vol. XXI THE SOLITAIRES OF SHASTA* By WILLIAM LEON DAWSON WITH FIVE PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR HENEVER I recall those two magic weeks spent near timberline on
Mount Shasta, I cannot be sure which image comes up first, whether the
chaste menace of the eternal snows which crown the summit, the somber iorest of the Shasta fir trees which girdles the mountain midway, or the gray ghostly shape of a bird which flits and vanishes by turn throughout that haunted forest. The snow-cap was a thing apart,--remote, incomparable, birdless; but the Shasta Fir (Abies shastensis), and the Townsend Solitaire (My?destes town- sendi) were paired entities, inseparable in the thought of a birdman. If the bird had elected to hide his nest in the ample draperies of blackbeard "?noss" (the lichen, Alectoria fremonti), which clothed and disguised most of the trees, there would have been no occasion to write this history. A Ruby-crowned King- let, better advised, dared to tehse us, daily, with his exulting song, and that right on the confines of Hardscramble Camp; for many wasted hours had taught us that his secret at least was secure in that mossy paradise. The guileless Soli- taires, instead, placed their nests ofteneat at the base of some giant of the forest, trustbig to humility and chance. But if they took chances in the open, they did not publish their immediate whereabouts by unguarded song nor by fatuous vis- itations. Every nest discovered was the reward of diligent search, or else it was a gift, so earnestly desired that it was hailed as good fort?me not to be despised because it was, for once, gratuitous. At the time of our arrival at timberline, July 7, 1916, Solitaires were nest- ing, or had nested, at every lower level down to 5000 feet. In the yellow pine belt discreetly anxious mothers were supervising the education of hobbledehoys who rather resented further attention. But the snows had lingered late that season. Moreover, they had been replenished by a heavy and very unseasonable downfall on the first day of the month. The birds which were accustomed to nesting at higher levels were crowding the retreating snows in their anxiety to begin the nesting season. In all probability many nests had been overwhelmed, so that thereafter we were really )vitnessing a second nesting season. At any rate, the birds continued in full song up to the time of our departure, July 19; whereas Dr. Merriam, who arrived on Shasta July 15, 1898, saw but six birds, and de- clared them to be "always silent". Silent! Well, perhaps the future distin- guished monographer of beam was even then attuning his ears to the music of Ursus hoots. With this much by way of introduction, and because the writer has a theory that bird articles ought to write themselves (if the field work has been attended to), he is going to ask the liberty of quoting from his note-books, with only slight emendation and rearrangement, and so to present six separate sketches of Soli- taires on Shasta. V147/2-16 Townsend Solitaire;' alt. 7200, July 8: Male heard singing in the tree-tops. The bird is evidently slfifting about from place to place in a beau- ti?ul fir grove. His song is wierd, eccentric, and unstudied, as refreshing as it
- Contribution from the Museum of Comparative 0ology..
