Go where you will throughout all these noble
forests, you everywhere find this little squirrel the master-existence.
Though only a few inches long, so intense is his fiery
vigor and restlessness, he stirs every grove with wild life, and makes
himself more important than the great bears that shuffle through the
berry tangles beneath him. Every tree feels the sting of his sharp
feet. Nature has made him master-forester, and committed the greater
part of the coniferous crops to his management. Probably over half of
all the ripe cones of the spruces, firs, and pines are cut off and
handled by this busy harvester. Most of them are stored away for food
through the winter and spring, but a part are pushed into shallow pits
and covered loosely, where some of the seeds are no doubt left to
germinate and grow up. All the tree squirrels are more or less
birdlike in voice and movements, but the Douglas is pre-eminently so,
possessing every squirrelish attribute, fully developed and
concentrated. He is the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch
to branch of his favorite evergreens, crisp and glossy and sound as a
sunbeam. He stirs the leaves like a rustling breeze, darting across
openings in arrowy lines, launching in curves, glinting deftly from
side to side in sudden zigzags, and swirling in giddy loops and
spirals around the trunks, now on his haunches, now on his head, yet
ever graceful and performing all his feats of strength and skill
without apparent effort. One never tires of this bright spark of
life, the brave little voice crying in the wilderness. His varied,
piney gossip is as savory to the air as balsam to the palate. Some of
his notes are almost flutelike in softness, while other prick and
tingle like thistles. He is the mockingbird of squirrels, barking
like a dog, screaming like a hawk, whistling like a blackbird or
linnet, while in bluff, audacious noisiness he is a jay. A small
thing, but filling and animating all the woods.
Nor is there any lack of wings, notwithstanding few are to be seen on
short, noisy rambles. The ousel sweetens the shady glens and canyons
where waterfalls abound, and every grove or forest, however silent it
may seem when we chance to pay it a hasty visit, has its singers, - thrushes, linnets, warblers, - while hummingbirds glint and hover about
the fringing masses of bloom around stream and meadow openings. But
few of these will show themselves or sing their songs to those who are
ever in haste and getting lost, going in gangs formidable in color and
accoutrements, laughing, hallooing, breaking limbs off the trees as
they pass, awkwardly struggling through briery thickets, entangled
like blue-bottles in spider webs, and stopping from time to time to
fire off their guns and pistols for the sake of the echoes, thus
frightening all the life about them for miles. It is this class of
hunters and travelers who report that there are "no birds in the woods
or game animals of any kind larger than mosquitoes."
Besides the singing birds mentioned above, the handsome Oregon grouse
may be found in the thick woods, also the dusky grouse and Franklin's
grouse, and in some places the beautiful mountain partridge, or quail.
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