In importance after the woodpeckers come the members of the sparrow family that inhabit the Tahoe region.  The little black-headed snowbird, Thurber’s junco, is the most common of all the Tahoe birds.  The thick-billed sparrow, a grayish bird with spotted breast and enormous bill is found on all the brushy hillsides and is noted for its glorious bursts of rich song.

Now and again one will see a flock of English sparrows, and the sweet-voiced song-sparrow endeavors to make up for the vulgarity of its English cousin by the delicate softness of its peculiar song.

Others of the family are the two purple finches (reddish birds), the pine-finch, very plain and streaked, the green-tailed towhee, with its cat-like call, and the white-crowned sparrow,—­its sweetly melancholy song, “Oh, dear me,” in falling cadence, is heard in every Sierran meadow.

The mountain song-sparrow, western lark, western chipping-fox, gold-finch, and house- and cassin-finches are seen.  The fly-catchers are omnipresent in August, though their shy disposition makes them hard to identify.  Hammond, olive-sided and western pewee are often seen, and at times the tall tree-tops are alive with kinglets.

Some visitors complain that they do not often see or hear the warblers, but in 1905, one bird-lover reported seven common representatives.  She says: 

The yellow bird was often heard and seen in the willows along the Lake.  Late in August the shrubs on the shore were alive with the Audubon group, which is so abundant in the vicinity of Los Angeles all winter.  Pileolated warblers, with rich yellow suits and black caps, hovered like hummers among the low shrubs in the woods.  Now and then a Pacific yellow-throat sang his bewitching “wichity wichity, wichity, wee.”  Hermit and black-throated gray warblers were also recorded.  The third week in August there was an extensive immigration of Macgillivray warblers.  Their delicate gray heads, yellow underparts, and the bobbing movement of the tail, distinguished them from the others.

The water ouzel finds congenial habitat in the canyons of the Tahoe region, and the careful observer may see scores of them as he walks along the streams and by the cascades and waterfalls during a summer’s season.  At one place they are so numerous as to have led to the naming of a beautiful waterfall, Ouzel Falls, after them.  Another bird is much sought after and can be seen and heard here, perhaps as often as any other place in the country.  That is the hermit thrush, small, delicate, grayish, with spotted breast.  The shyness of the bird is proverbial, and it frequents the deepest willow and aspen thickets.  Once heard, its sweet song can never be forgotten, and happy is he who can get near enough to hear it undisturbed.  Far off, it is flute-like, pure and penetrating, though not loud.  Gradually it softens until it sounds but as the faintest of tinkling bell-like notes, which die away leaving one with the assurance that he has been hearing the song of the chief bird of the fairies, or of birds which accompany the heavenly lullabies of the mother angels putting their baby angels to sleep.