Townsend's Solitaire

Far, far, far in the hills
Watching the clouds go by.
Fly — fly — flying around
Under a wide, wide sky.

Here, here, here is peace,
Quiet and joy and rest.
Where, where, where the winds
Waver firs of the west.

Less tender perhaps than the Hermit's song but more sustained, the notes of a SOLITAIRE given from tip of a conifer by a quiet mountain stream are attuned to the high places where it lives. When great clouds gallop above the Sierras the song rings out free and wild as the racing cumuli. Then when evening comes, the lay changes to a low exquisite warble. Birds are poets, sensitive to Nature's moods.

Perhaps the Solitaires which Bailey writes about, singing in Garden of the Gods, were reincarnated souls of Nuns who from their gray throats were releasing music, silenced by convent walls of earth.

The Solitaire, except for an occasional song during the nesting season, is silent, reflecting his surroundings to a remarkable degree — a dim gray spirit of a bird flitting quietly through arched aisles of the coniferous forests. He is the reigning genie of the shadowy nooks, the remote solitudes; his favorite haunts the dark cathedral-like groves of alpine firs, ranging downward into the sunnier, more open pineries of the lower Sierras. He prefers the calm margin of a dreaming lake rather than the swift tumult of rivers, a sheltered cove in a quiet place to commotion and din. One does not discover the Solitaire through any effort on his part to make himself conspicuous or a nuisance like the jay, nor when his solitude is invaded does he resent your presence by scolding or chatter. His is rather a disposition at once sweet and tolerant; you take to him instantly and he accepts you at your true value, going about his business in his ordinary shy manner, showing neither distrust nor fear unless startled by an abrupt movement or loud sound.

So rare a singer is the Solitaire that during my mountain rambles, extending over a period of thirteen years, I have heard the song on only five occasions, which will long be remembered from the nature of the surroundings and the delightful melody of this dweller in the silent places. The first time was in the forenoon of one of those bright, exquisite days of early spring at Lake Tahoe, when the warring elements had declared a truce and were at rest for a time. The little shadowy canyon where I rested enjoyed a hushed and solemn tranquility not diminished, but rather added to, by a drowsy murmuring from a bright brook splashing on its way to the lake. This, I thought, could be none other than the haunt of a Solitaire, and I wished that I might see the bird; and as in answer to my prayer came one, a small gray ghost of a bird that flitted silently in and out the leafy corridors of its retreat, finally resting on the limb of a pine not ten feet away. And as I watched, the feathers of his breast and throat rose with a song that softly echoed the beautiful voices of the brook, the gurgling of eddies, the silvery tinkle of tiny cascades, and the deeper melody of miniature falls. Infinitely fine and sweet was the rendering of mountain music. At times the song of the bird rose above the sound of the water in rippling cadences not shrill, but in an infinite number of runs and modulated trills, dying away again and again to low plaintive whispering notes suggestive of tender memories. I know of no bird song with which it can be compared except that of the Water Ousel. But the song of the Ousel is sung to the accompaniment of wilder waters; nothing less than the raging thundering cataracts of larger streams will do for him.

Another memorable occasion was at daybreak, after an interminable night without blankets at a high altitude. The great summit peaks of the Sierras, distinct against the western sky, had just begun to glow with the first delicate rose-tints of the dawn, while the forests mantling their granite flanks stood misty and somber and still above dead banks of snow. Suddenly, breaking the silence, came faintly the notes of a Solitaire, growing stronger with the light like the first low tentative laughter of a little alpine streamlet set free from ice. The same sweet notes that I remembered, clear as the drip from icicles, as spontaneous as the songs of mountain streams.

Sunny open glades in the woods, rather than the more secure shelter of dense forests, are usually selected by the Townsend Solitaire (Myadestes townsendi) for nesting purposes. Five nests which I have examined were thus situated in open or thinly forested areas surrounded by very dense woods, and were found more by accident than design, the birds flushing as I passed by. Their behavior when thus disturbed is in harmony with their quiet disposition; by their actions they show a tender solicitude, but not one of the five pairs of birds, when I was in the vicinity of their nests, uttered a single note of complaint or acted as if in great distress or fear. —Hanford.