Identifier: ournationalparks1909muir (find matches)
Title: Our national parks
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Muir, John, 1838-1914 author
Subjects: National parks and reserves
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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and streaked with shadowycanons and streams, and surveying every frogmarsh and sandy flat within a hundred miles. Eagles and hawks are oftentimes seen above theridges and domes. The greatest height at whichI have observed them was about twelve thousandfeet, over the summits of Mount Hoffman, inthe middle region of the Park. A few pairshad their nests on the cliffs of this mountain,and could be seen every day in summer, huntingmarmots, mountain beavers, pikas, etc. A pairof golden eagles have made their home in Yo-semite ever since I went there thirty years ago.Their nest is on the Nevada Fall Cliff, oppositethe Liberty Cap. Their screams are ratherpleasant to hear in the vast gulfs between thegranite cliffs, and they help the owls in keepingthe echoes busy. But of all the birds of the high Sierra, thestrangest, noisiest, and most notable is the Clarkecrow (Nucifraga columhiana). He is a footlong and nearly two feet in extent of wing, ashygray in general color, with black wings, white
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LIBERTY CAP AND NEVADA FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY AMONG THE BIRDS OF THE YOSEMITE 229 tail, and a strong, sharp bill, with which he digsinto the pine cones for the seeds on which hemainly subsists. He is quick, boisterous, jerky,and irregular in his movements and speech,and makes a tremendously loud and showy ad-vertisement of himself, — swooping and divingin deep curves across gorges and valleys fromridge to ridge, alighting on dead spars, lookingwarily about him, and leaving his dry, springyperches trembling from the vigor of his kick ashe launches himself for a new flight, screamingfrom time to time loud enough to be heard morethan a mile in still weather. He dwells far backon the high stormbeaten margin of the forest,where the mountain pine, juniper, and hemlockgrow wide apart on glacier pavements and domesand rough crumbhng ridges, and the dwarf pinemakes a low crinkled growth along the flanksof the Summit peaks. In so open a region, ofcourse, he is well seen. Everybody notices him

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