Page:Condor20(2).djvu/24

70 THE CONDOR Vol. XX west and the red farm buildings glowed a keen red, the fence posts standing as bars of. gold. Over the fields the projected shadows of the buildings made irregular domes of cold green across the sunlit yellow green of the young wheat fields. On a July night a thunder storm at supper time made an ob- scured sunset, but when the heavy rain fell from the sky, the darkness lightened and an unusual color effect was given the landscape. The squares of plowed ground stood out black against the intense vivid green of the grain fields. It was at once a repressed but illuminated sunset, the light apparently being re- . fleeted from the clouds. After trying east winds, electric storms, and unprecedented rains, near the middle of July the wind veered to the northwest giving us one of the per- fect, heavenly prairie days with serene blue sky, ever shifting cloud forms, and a caressingly soft prairie breeze that brought the sweet breath of new-mown hay. As I watched the ever-changing white forms in the sky, I wished that a moving picture film might be taken of clouds on the. prairie. Now a row of pointed caps marked the east, now small irregular cloudlets floated along the southern horizon; then cumulus masses formed but to dissolve, while far-flung exultant clouds held the eye in the high sky. Bands of light illumined the wheat fields, and from a fence post a Vesper Sparrow sang his uplifted song, in rare harmony with it all. (To be continued) SIX WEEKS IN THE HIGH SIERRAS IN NESTING TIME By MILTON S. RAY WITH FOUR PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR Y RETURNING for a number of years to the same localities in the Tahoe region I have had opportunity to note the variations in its bird-life from year to year, both in abundance and variety. Almost every season I have added new birds to the Lake Valley list, though each year, too, I have failed to record certain birds present the previous seasons. The winter of 1911 had been one of very heavy snowfall, and while en rodte from Truckee to Lake Tahoe on the thirteenth of May the train track led the en- tire distance through snow, in places as deep as twelve feet. Willows and aspens along the roaring streams showed as yet no signs of leaf. Notwithstanding this wintry outlook, I noticed a newly completed nest of the Water Ouzel (Cinclus mexicanus unicolor) on the top of a large boulder in the middle of the Truckee River near Deer Park Station, while nearer Lake Tahoe I noted'numerous Am- erican Mergansers (Merganser americanus) in pairs flying up stream. Snow, three to twelve feet deep, running .down to the water's edge, covered the western shores of Lake Tahoe everywhere along the route to Bijou, where I arrived at 1:45 r. ?. in time for a short tramp afield. I saw the Audubon Warb- ler ( Dendroica auduboni auduboni) , Calliope Hummingbird ( Stellula calliope) and seven other species in the winter-like solitudes, before a blinding snow-storm