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Updated: May 4, 2025
Among smaller birds of different habits, the red partridge and the water-ousel are frequently seen. The rock-partridge, or bartavelle, is also found, but is rare. The four-legged fauna is not represented by the wolf or the boar, the forests being too scanty to afford them sufficient cover, and the largest wild quadrupeds are the badger and the fox.
And then, as the last notes of the mort had died away, did not there come over him an awe at the silence of the woods, not broken, but deepened, by the unvarying monotone of the roaring stream beneath, which flashed and glittered, half-hidden in the dark chasm, in clear brown pools reflecting every leaf and twig, in boiling pits and walls of foam, ever changing, and yet for ever the fleeting on past the poor dead reeking stag and the silent hounds lying about on the moss- embroidered stones, their lolling tongues showing like bright crimson sparkles in the deep rich Venetian air of the green sombre shades; while the startled water-ousel, with his white breast, flitted a few yards and stopped to stare from a rock's point at the strange intruders; and a single stock-dove, out of the bosom of the wood, began calling sadly and softly, with a dreamy peaceful moan?
Here also in the mesquite and giant cactus were thrush and Western meadow-larks and mocking-birds mimicking the call of the cat-bird. Down in the brush by the river was the happy little water-ousel, as cheerful in his way as the dumpy-built musical canyon wren. The Mexican crossbill appeared to have little fear of the migrating Northern shrike.
This consumption of one another in its various modifications is a kind of culture varying with the degree of directness with which it is carried out, but we should be careful not to ascribe to such culture any improving qualities upon those on whom it is brought to bear. The water-ousel plucks moss from the riverbank to build its nest, but is does not improve the moss by plucking it.
During my stay at the Government fish-hatching station on the McCloud I was accompanied in my walks along the riverbank by a McCloud boy about ten years of age, a bright, inquisitive fellow, who gave me the Indian names of the birds and plants that we met. The water-ousel he knew well and he seemed to like the sweet singer, which he called "Sussinny."
But to destroy these under-sized fish was not sport, and as at that moment a water-colley passed I determined to let the trout alone, and observe his ways. Colley means a blackbird; water-colley, the water-blackbird or water-ousel called the dipper in the North. In districts where the bird is seldom seen it is occasionally shot and preserved as a white blackbird.
Ferns are growing so thickly in the hedge that soon it will seem composed of their fronds; the first June rose hangs above their green tips. A water-ousel with white breast rises and flies on; again disturbed, he makes a circle, and returns to the stream behind.
With the same regularity that the sun rose he and Woods, the carpenter, had their daily set-to, if over nothing more important than the mislaying of a file or saw no doubt they were at it now. Bruce sighed. It seemed eons ago that he had had time to watch the kingfisher flying to his nest or the water-ousel ducking and teetering sociably at his feet.
These, with the noisy crested jays, an occasional "camp-robber," the little nuthatches, the cheerful canyon wren with his rollicking song, the happy water-ousel, "kill-deer," and road-runners and the water birds, ducks, geese, and mud-hens, with an occasional crane, made up the bird life seen in the open country and in these upper canyons.
Often, standing on the shore at low tide, has one longed to walk on and in under the waves, as the water-ousel does in the pools of the mountain burn, and see it all but for a moment; and a solemn beauty and meaning has invested the old Greek fable of Glaucus the fisherman: how eating of the herb which gave his fish strength to leap back into their native element, he was seized on the spot with a strange longing to follow them under the waves, and became for ever a companion of the fair semi-human forms with which the Hellenic poets peopled their sunny bays and firths, feeding "silent flocks" far below on the green Zostera beds, or basking with them on the sunny ledges in the summer noon, or wandering in the still bays on sultry nights amid the choir of Amphitrite and her sea- nymphs:
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