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Although they were the first of the kind that I had ever seen alive, I at once recognized the feathered visitors to be water ouzels. The birds preceded me on my way along the water course towards camp, and were never quiet a minute.
It was impossible to go very far without the aid of snow-shoes, but I found no great difficulty in making my way to a part of the river where one of my ouzels lived. I found him at home busy about his breakfast, apparently unaware of anything uncomfortable in the weather.
In addition to the maps and diagrams that hung on the whitewashed walls of the schoolroom there were many cases containing stuffed birds, such as guillemots, terns, owls, and ouzels; and specimens of the small quadrupeds of the locality, including a weasel and a fine pair of otters.
The ouzels proved no exception to the rule. In this case it was the cock who showed himself the bolder spirit.
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.
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. After the lakes on the High Sierra come the glacier meadows.
Most of the plants are in full flower. The blessed ouzels have built their mossy huts and are now singing their best songs with the streams.
Blane's, for our good Abbot Godfrey bade me be with him ere nightfall. Where is your brother Allan? Say, was he of those who went with my father and Alpin to the punting in Glen More this forenoon?" But Ailsa was again weeping over the fate of her water ouzels and did not answer him. Ailsa was some two years younger than himself. They had been companions from the time of their infancy.
"To hunt, my lord, and to hawk," said Roland Graeme. "To hunt coneys, and to hawk at ouzels!" said the Regent, smiling; "for such are the sports of ladies and their followers."
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.
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