Page:The birds of America, volume 7.djvu/501

 The country around Fort Union, which is situated a few miles above the confluence of the Yellow Stone river and the Missouri, consists of a large naked prairie, bounded to the eastward by a range of singular hills, both in their form and diversity of altitude. This prairie, like all others in that section of the country, is somewhat sterile, covered with a superabundance of cactus of at least two kinds, and becomes burnt and dried as early as the beginning of August. The hills themselves are more or less abrupt, stony, and yet covered with many curious species of plants. These hills extend for several miles, at about the same distance from the banks of the Missouri; along their tops or their declivities, many rare species of birds are found during spring and summer; but more are met with on the surface of the great prairie below. At moderate distances are seen more or less extensive ravines, where a few scanty dwarfish trees, and tall rough weeds or grasses are found along the margins of the small and mostly dried up rivulets that meander through them. Reader, it is along the banks of these streamlets, and perhaps on the branches of the trees which I have mentioned, that Brewer's Blackbird may be found during almost all the morning rambles of the student of Nature. Groups of seven or eight are seen to alight on the branches in a loose manner, and in silence. They soon move upward or downward, and allow you to approach within some fifteen or twenty paces of them; and uttering their notes whilst you are watching their movements, you are at once assured that it is a species as yet unknown to the naturalists of our country, and therefore procure several of them in a few moments. They do not evince the pertness so usually accompanying our other birds of this family, but look all the while as if unsatisfied with their present abode


 * See vol. iv. p. 49. | Ibid. p. 51.