Chapter VI: Part 6

Then, a year or two afterward, walking one afternoon in a quiet back road, I startled a woodcock from directly beside the track. “Well, well,” said I, “here is the very place;” for I noticed not far off a bit of alder swamp, with a wood behind it and an open field near by. All the conditions were right, and on the first available evening, with something like assurance, I made my way thither. Yes, the bird was there, in the full ecstasy of his wonderful performance--for wonderful it surely is.

My friend was not with me, however, and for one reason or another, now past recall, another year went by without our being able to visit the spot together at the necessary minute. Then a day came. He heard the bird (well I remember the hour), was delighted beyond measure, and that very evening, still under the spell of the “miracle,” put his impressions of it on paper. The next day they were printed, and I remember still my pleasure when the most competent of all men to speak of such a matter sent me word that it was the best description of the performance that he had ever seen. If any of my readers desire to see it, it is to be found in a little volume of most delightful outdoor essays entitled “The Listener in the Country.”

All this I lived over again last evening as I went, alone, to the same spot--not having visited it on this errand for several years--to see whether the bird would still be true to his old tryst. I believed that he would be, in spite of the skepticism of a wide-awake man who lives almost within stone’s throw of the place; for though woodcock are said to be growing less and less common, I have strong faith in the conservative disposition of all such creatures. Once they have a place to their mind, they are likely to hold it.

Fox sparrows were singing in their best manner as I passed on my way, and I would gladly have stayed to listen; their season, also, is a short one; but I kept to my point.

And after all, I arrived a few minutes ahead of time. Up and down the road I paced (no one in sight, nor any danger of any one), with an ear always awake for a certain note, the “bleat,” so called, of the woodcock. Should I hear it? It was fast getting dark, the western sky covered with black clouds (a great disadvantage), with only scattered gleams of bright color, very narrow, just on the horizon. Hark! Yes; that was it--_Spneak_. There is no putting the sound into letters, but those who know the call of the nighthawk may understand sufficiently well what I am trying to express, for the two notes are almost identical.

With this note, single, repeated for a considerable time at intervals of perhaps half a minute,--the bird still on the ground, and turning about, so that some of his utterances sound three or four times as far away as others,--with this strange, unmusical, almost ridiculous overture the woodcock invariably introduces his evening recital. I wait, therefore, leaning against the heavy stone wall, costly and unromantic, with which the rich new owner of the land has lately fenced his possession, till all at once the silence is broken by the familiar whistling noises made by the heavy bird as he leaves the ground. This time they are unusually faint, and are lost almost immediately. Only for my acquaintance with the matter I should assume that the bird had flown away, and that my evening was lost. As it is, I continue to listen. Once and again I catch the sounds. The fellow is still rising. I can see him, but only in my mind’s eye. Those black clouds hide him quite as effectually as if he were behind them. Still I can see him. I know he has gone up in a broad spiral--up, up, up, as on a winding staircase.

Now, after silence, begins a different sound, more musical, more clearly vocal; breathless, broken, eager, passionate, ecstatic. And now, far aloft in the sky, where the clouds are of a lighter color, I suddenly catch sight of the bird, a dark speck, shooting this way and that, descending in sharp zigzags, whistling with his last gasps. And now, as if exhausted,--and well he may be,--he drops to earth (I see him come down) very near me, much nearer than I had thought.

_Spneak_, he calls. I know exactly what is coming. At intervals, just as before, he repeats the sound, till suddenly he is on the wing again, whistling as he goes. He flies straight from me,--for this time, by good luck, I see him as he starts,--and mounts and mounts. Then, far, far up, he whistles, _zip, zip_, and then, when he can stay no longer, comes down in crazy zigzags.

A wonderful display. If a man could be as truly enraptured as the woodcock seems to be, he would know the joys of the blest. I wonder how many thousand Aprils this cumbrous-looking, gross-looking, unpoetical-looking bird has been disporting himself thus at heaven’s gate. There must be a real soul in a creature, no matter what his appearance, who is capable of such transports and ravishments, such marvelous upliftings, such mad reaches after the infinite.

I listen and wonder, and then come away, meditating on what I have seen and heard. The last of the small birds have fallen silent. Only a few hylas are peeping as I pass a cranberry meadow. Then, halfway home, as the road traverses a piece of woods, with a brook singing on one side, and the moon peeping through fleecy clouds, suddenly I halt. That was a screech owl’s voice, was it not? Yes; faint, tremulous, sweet, a mere breath, the falling, quavering strain again reaches my ear. The bird is somewhere beyond the brook. I wonder how far. Well up on the wooded hillside, I think it likely. I put my hands behind my ears and hearken. Again and again I hear it; true music! music and poetry in one; the voice of the night. But look! What is that dark object just before me on a low branch not two rods away? There is no light with which to be sure of its outlines; a tuft of dead leaves, perhaps; but it is of a screech owl’s size. Another phrase. Yes, it comes from that spot, or I am tricked. And now the bird moves, and the next instant takes wing. But he goes only a few feet, and alights even nearer to me than before. How soft his voice is! Almost as soft as his flight. How different from the woodcock’s panting, breathless whistle! Though I can see him, and could almost touch him, the tremulous measure might still be coming from the depths of the wood. I listen with all my ears, till an approaching carriage turns a corner in the road below. I hope the owl will not mind; but as the wheels come near he leaves his perch, flies directly before my face (with no more noise than if a feather were falling through the air), and disappears in the forest opposite.

Two good birds I have listened to. The evening has been kind to me. Two birds? nay, two poets: a poet in a frenzy, and a poet dreaming.

UNDER APRIL CLOUDS

“Good-morning.”

“Ah, good-morning. How are you?”

I was on what I suppose is habitually the most crowded sidewalk in Boston, where men in haste are always to be seen betaking themselves to the street as the only means of making headway. A hand was laid on my shoulder. A business man, one of the busiest, I should think he must be, had come up behind me. He was looking happy. Yes, he said, he was very well. “And yesterday,” he continued, “I had a great pleasure. I saw my first fox-colored sparrow, and heard him sing.”

No wonder his face shone. His condition was enviable. The fox sparrow is a noble bird, with a most musical voice, the prince of all sparrows. To hear him for the first time--if one does hear him--is a real event. A man might well walk a crowded city sidewalk the next day and smile to himself at the memory of such high fortune.

After all, happiness is a good thing. Not so desirable, perhaps, as a great office, or a mint of money, but a pretty good thing, nevertheless. It is encouraging, in these days of far-sought pleasures and prodigal expense, to see men get it at a low rate and on innocent terms.

For myself, I think I have never known fox sparrows more plentiful than for the past week. From our human point of view their present migration has been eminently favorable; from the birds’ point of view it has probably been in the highest degree unfavorable, the prolonged spell of cloudy and rainy weather having made night flights difficult, not to say impossible. The travelers have been obliged to stay where the storm had caught them, and we, at this intermediate station, have profited by their misfortune.

On the 7th I stood in the midst of as fine a flock as a man could wish to see. A thick cloud enveloped us; we might have been on a mountain-top; but for the minute it had ceased raining, and the birds were in a lively mood. Sometimes as many as five or six were singing together, while a chorus of snowbirds trilled the prettiest of accompaniments; a concert worthy of Easter or any other festival.

The weather has been of a kind to keep night-traveling migrants here, I say; which is as much as to say that it has been of a sort to prevent other such birds from arriving. There have been no bright nights, I think, since April came in. So it happens, according to my theory (which may be as sound or as unsound as the reader pleases), that although it is now the 10th of the month, there has been, for my eye, no sign of chipper, field sparrow, or vesper sparrow. How should there be? How should such creatures find their way, with the fog and the rain blinding them night after night? No doubt they are impatient to be at home again in the old dooryards, the old savin-dotted pastures, and the old hay-fields. By and by the clouds will vanish, and they will hasten northward in crowds. The night air will be full of them, and the next day all outdoor, bird-loving people will be in clover.

Unfavorable as the weather is, however, and against all probabilities, one cannot quite forego seasonable expectations. I pass the border of a grass field. A sparrow sings in the distance, and I stop to listen. Could that have been a vesper sparrow? The song comes again. No; it begins a little in the vesper’s manner; the opening measure is unusually smooth and unemphatic; but the bird is only a song sparrow. It is no shrewder than Peter. Its speech bewrayeth it.

One kingfisher I have seen, shooting through the misty air far aloft, his long wings making him look at that height like some seabird or wader. I remember when the sight--not uncommon in spring--was to me an insoluble mystery. As for calling the bird a kingfisher, such a thought never occurred to me. I knew the kingfisher well enough, or imagined that I did, but not at that altitude and flying in that strong, purposeful manner. Yet even at such times he commonly sounds his rattle before him, as if he wished his identity and his whereabouts to be known.

I have seen also a single marsh hawk. That was on the 9th, and the circumstances of the case were ludicrous. I had stopped to look down from a wooded hilltop into a swampy pool, where ducks sometimes alight, when I saw a white object moving rapidly along the farther side of the swamp, now visible, now hidden behind a veil of trees and shrubbery. A road runs along that border of the swamp, and I took this moving white object for a bundle which a boy was carrying upon a bicycle (making pretty quick time), till suddenly I perceived that it was only a marsh hawk’s rump! A redwing had given chase to the hawk--mostly for sport, I imagine, or just to keep his hand in; for I do not suppose he could have had any real grudge to settle. Probably this is the first case on record in which a hawk was ever mistaken for a wheelman.

Two evenings ago I made a solitary excursion to an extensive swamp and meadow, hoping to witness, or at least to hear, the aerial performance of the snipe. The air was full of a Scotch mist, and the sky cloudy. If the birds were there, and in a performing mood, they would be likely to get under way in good season. I waded across the meadow out of the sight of houses, and, having found what seemed to be a promising position, I took it and held it for perhaps an hour. But I heard none of those strange, ghostly, swishing noises that I was listening for. Perhaps the birds had not yet arrived. Perhaps this was not a snipe meadow.

For a time robins and song sparrows made music more or less remote, and an unseen fox sparrow, nearer at hand, amused me with excellent imitations of the brown thrasher’s smacking kiss. Then, as it grew really dark, I relinquished the hunt and started homeward. And then the real music began; for as I approached the highway I heard the whistle of a woodcock, and presently discovered that, for the first time in my life, I was walking through what might be called a veritable woodcock concert. Once three birds were vocal together; one was “bleating” on the right, another on the left, while a third was at the very height of his ecstasy overhead. For a mile or more I walked under a shower of this incomparable, indescribable music. It dropped into my ears like rain from heaven.

One bird was calling just over the roadside wall. I stole nearer and nearer, taking a few cautious steps after each bleat, till finally I could hear the water dropping into the hogshead. I wonder how many readers will know what I mean by that. After each call, as a kind of pendant to it, there comes, if you are very, very close, a curious small sound, exactly as if a drop of water (the comparison is not mine) had fallen into a hogshead already half full. I had not heard it for years. In fact, I had forgotten it, and heard it now for the first few times without recollecting what it was.

Then the bird rose--always invisible, of course, for by this time there was no thought of seeing anything--and went skyward in broad circles, till he was at the top of his flight, and when he descended he came to earth on the other side of the road, a good distance away. He had seen me, I suppose, with those big bull’s-eyes of his, which do so much to heighten the oddity of his personal appearance.

He was the last of his kind. For the rest of my walk I heard no music except the sweet whistling of hylas here and there, and once, in a woodland pool, the grating chorus of a set of wood frogs.

Butterflies are waiting for sunshine--like the rest of us; I have not seen so much as an Antiopa; and the only wild flowers I have yet picked are the pretty red blossoms (pistillate blossoms) of the hazel; tiny things, floral egrets, if you please to call them so, of a lively and beautiful color. Sunshine or no sunshine, they were in bloom for Easter.

FLYING SQUIRRELS AND SPADE-FOOT FROGS

It is pleasant to realize familiar truths anew; to have it brought freshly to mind, for example, how many forms of animal life there are about us of which we seldom get so much as a glimpse.

In all my tramping over eastern Massachusetts I have met with two foxes. One I saw for perhaps the tenth part of a second, the other for perhaps two or three seconds. And probably my experience has not been exceptional. In this one particular it would be safe to wager that not one in ten of those who read this article will be able to boast of any great advantage over the man who wrote it. Yet every raiser of poultry hereabout will certify that foxes are by no means uncommon, and I know a man living within fifteen miles of the State House who, last winter, by a kind of “still hunt”--without a dog--killed three foxes in as many successive days. Reynard has fine gifts of invisibility, but a man with foxes on his mind will be likely to find them.

This same near neighbor of mine takes now and then an otter; only three or four weeks ago he showed me the skin of one on its stretching-board; and the otter is an animal that I not only have never seen in this part of the world, but never expect to see. I haven’t that kind of an eye. As for muskrats, the trapper takes them almost without number; “rats,” he calls them; while to me it is something like an event if once or twice a year I happen to come upon one swimming in a brook.

Another of these seclusive races, that manage to live close about us unespied by all except the most inquisitive of their human neighbors, is the race of flying squirrels. Whether they are more or less common than red squirrels, gray squirrels, and chipmunks, it would be difficult to say; but while red squirrels, gray squirrels, and chipmunks flit before you wherever you go, you may haunt the woods from year’s end to year’s end without seeing hide or hair of their interesting cousin. Flying squirrels stir abroad after dark; not because their deeds are evil (though they are said to like small birds and birds’ eggs), but because--well, as the wise old nursery saw very conclusively puts it, because “it is their nature to.”

Several times during the past winter I made attempts to see them (the story of one of these attempts has been told in a previous chapter), but always without success, though twice I was taken to a nest that was known to be in use. The other day I went to the same place again, the friend who conducted me having found a squirrel there that very forenoon. He shook the tree, a small gray-birch, with a nest of leaves and twigs perched in its top, and out peeped the squirrel. “See him?” said my friend. “Yes.” Then he gave the tree a harder shake, and in a moment the creature spread his “wings” and sailed gracefully away, landing on the trunk of an oak not far off, at about the height of my head. There he clung, his large handsome eye, full of a startled emotion, fastened upon me. I wondered if he would let me put my hand on him; but as I approached within three or four yards he scrambled up the tree into the small branches at the top. He was going to take another flight, if the emergency seemed to call for it, and the higher he could get, the better. The oak was too big to be shaken, but a smaller tree stood near it. This my companion shook in the squirrel’s face, and again he took flight. This time he passed squarely over my head, showing a flat outspread surface sailing through the air, looking not the least in the world like a squirrel or any other quadruped. Again he struck against a trunk, and again he ran up into the treetop. And again he was shaken off.

Four times he flew, and then I protested that I had seen enough and would not have him molested further. We left him in a maple-top, surrounded by handsome red flower-clusters.

The flight, even under such unnatural conditions, is a really pretty performance, the surprising thing about it being the ease and grace with which the acrobat manages to take an upward turn toward the end of his course, so as always to alight head uppermost against the bole.

It would be fun to see such a carnival as Audubon describes, when two hundred or more of the squirrels were at play in the evening, near Philadelphia, running up the trees and sailing away, like boys at the old game of “swinging off birches.” “Scores of them,” he says, “would leave each tree at the same moment, and cross each other, gliding like spirits through the air, seeming to have no other object in view than to indulge a playful propensity.”

Compared with that, mine was a small show; but it was so much better than nothing.

Two mornings later (April 30) I was walking up the main street of our village, lounging along, waiting for an electric car to overtake me, when I heard loud batrachian voices from a field on my left hand. “Aha!” said I, “the spade-foots are out again.” It had occurred to me within a day or two that this should be their season, if, as is believed, their appearance above ground is conditioned upon an unusual rainfall.

Some years ago, when I was amusing myself for a little with the study of toads and frogs, checking Dr. J. A. Allen’s annotated list of the Massachusetts batrachia, I became very curious about this peculiar and little understood species, known scientifically as _Scaphiopus holbrookii_, or the solitary spade-foot. It was originally described from South Carolina, I read, and was first found in Massachusetts, near Salem, about 1810. Its cries were said to have been heard at a distance of half a mile, and were mistaken for those of young crows. For more than thirty years afterward the frogs were noticed at this place only three times. They were described as burrowing in the ground, coming forth only to spawn, and that, as far as could be ascertained, at very irregular intervals, sometimes many years in length.

This, as I say, I read in Dr. Allen’s catalogue, to the great sharpening of my curiosity. If I ever heard such noises, I should be prepared to guess at the author of them. Well, some years afterward (it was almost exactly eight years ago), fresh from a first visit to Florida, where my ears had grown expectant of strange sounds (a great use of travel), I stepped out of my door one evening in late April, and was hardly in the street before I heard somewhere ahead of me a chorus of stentorian frog-notes. “That should be the spade-foot’s voice,” I said to myself, with full conviction. I hastened forward, traced the tumult to a transient pool in a field, and as I neared the place picked up a board that lay in the grass, and with it, by good fortune, turned the first frog I came in sight of into a specimen. This I sent to the batrachian specialist at Cambridge, who answered me, as I knew he would, that it was Scaphiopus.

My spade-foots of yesterday morning were in the same spot. I could not stay then to look at them, for at that moment the car came along. I left it at a favorite place in the next township, and had gone a mile or so on foot when from another transient roadside pool I heard the spade-foot’s voice again. This was most interesting. I skirted the water, trying to get within reach of one of the performers. The attempt was unsuccessful; but in the course of it I saw for the first time the creature in the act of calling. And every time I saw him I laughed. He lay stretched out at full length upon the surface of the pool, floating high, as if he were somehow peculiarly buoyant. Then suddenly his hind parts dropped, his head flew up, his enormous white, or pinkish-white, vocal sac was instantaneously inflated (like a white ball on the water), and the grating call was given out; after which the creature’s head dropped, his hinder parts bobbed up into place (sometimes he was nearly overset by the violence of the action), and again he lay silent.

This same ludicrous performance--which by the watch was repeated every three or four seconds--I observed more at length in the other pool after my return. It seems to be indulged in only so long as the frogs are unmated. I took it for the call of the male, the “lusty bachelor.” At the same moment couples lay here and there upon the water, all silent as dead men.

That was yesterday afternoon. At night, as had been true the evening previous (the neighbors in at least four of the nearer houses having noticed the uproar), the chorus was loud. I could hear it from my window, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant. This morning there is no sign of batrachian life about the place. Within a very short time--long before the tadpoles, which will be hatched in two or three days, can possibly have matured--the pool will in the ordinary course of nature have dried up, and all those eggs will have gone to waste.

A strange life it seems. What do the frogs live on underground? Why do they omit, year after year, to come forth and lay their eggs? Do they wait to be drowned out, and then (like thrifty farmers, who improve a wet season in which to marry) proceed to perpetuate the species?

These and many other questions it would be easy to ask. Especially one would like to read from the inside the story of the life and adventures of the young, which grow from the egg to maturity--through tadpole to frog--without seeing father or mother. What a little we know! And how few are the things we see!

THE WARBLERS ARE COMING

They are a grand army. The Campbells are nowhere in the comparison, whether for numbers or looks. And this is their month. Let us all go out to see them and cry them welcome.

They are late, most exceptionally so. I have never known anything to match it. Brave travelers as they are (some of them, yes, many of them, are on a three or four thousand mile journey; and a long flight it is for a five-inch bird, from South America to the arctic circle)--brave travelers as they are, they cannot contend against the inevitable, and our April weather, this year, was too much even for a bird’s punctuality.

The yellow warbler, for example, one of the prettiest of the tribe, is by habit one of the truest to his schedule. In any ordinary season he may be confidently expected to arrive in our Boston country on the first day of May. If conditions favor his passage, he may even anticipate the date, perhaps by forty-eight hours. This year not a yellow warbler was to be seen up to May 6. Then, between the evening of the 6th and the morning of the 7th, the birds dropped into their accustomed places, and in the early forenoon, when I went out to look for them, they were singing as cheerily as if they had never been away. With nothing but their wits and their wings to depend upon, I thought they had done exceedingly well. To me, on such terms, South America would seem a very long way off.

The same night brought the Nashville warblers. On the 6th not one was visible, for I made it my business to look. On the morning of the 7th I had no need to search for them. In all the old haunts, among the pitch-pines and the gray-birches, they were flitting about and singing, as fresh as larks and as lively as crickets. They, too, have come from the tropics, and will go as far north, some of them, as “Labrador and the fur countries.” A bold spirit may live under a few feathers.

With them, I am pretty sure, came a goodly detachment of myrtle warblers (yellow-rumps), though the advance guards of that host (two birds were all that fell under my eye) were seen on the 18th of April. The great host is still to come; for the myrtles _are_ a host,--a multitude that no man can number. As I listen to their soft, dreamy trill on these fair spring mornings, when the tall valley willows are all in their earliest green,--a sight worth living for,--I seem sometimes to be for the moment on the heights of the White Mountains. Well I remember how much I enjoyed their quiet breath of song on the snowy upper slopes of Mt. Moosilauke in May a year ago. For the myrtle, notwithstanding his name, is a great lover of knee-high spruces.

He is a lovely bird, wherever he lives, and it is good to see him flourish, though by so doing he forfeits the peculiar charm of novelty. Everything considered, I am bound to say, that is not so regrettable a loss. If he were as scarce as some of his relatives, every collector’s hand would be against him. Czars and rare birds must pay the price.

The first member of the family to make his appearance with me this spring was the pine warbler. He was trilling in a pine grove (his name is one of the few that fit) on April 17. “The warblers are coming,” he said. Not so pronounced a beauty as many of his tribe, he is one of the most welcome. He braves the season, and with his lack of distinguishing marks and his preference for pine-tops, he offers an instructive deal of puzzlement to beginners in ornithology. His song is simplicity itself, and, rightly or wrongly, always impresses me as the coolest of the cool.

I stood the other day between a pine warbler and a thrasher. The thrasher sang like one possessed. He might have been crazy, beside himself with passion. Operatic composers, aiming at something new and brilliant in the way of a “mad scene,” should borrow a leaf out of the planting bird’s repertory. The house would “come down,” I could warrant. The pine warbler sang as one hums a tune at his work. Among birds, as among humans, it takes all kinds to make a world.

After the advent of the myrtle warblers, on April 18, eleven days elapsed with no new arrivals, so far as I discovered, except a few chipping sparrows, first seen on the 23d! The weather was doing its worst. Then, on the 29th, I saw three yellow palm warblers. They were singing, as they usually are at this season--singing and wagging their tails, and incidentally putting me in mind of Florida, where in winter they are seen of every one. It is noticeable that these three earliest of the warblers all have, by way of song, a brief trill. Very much alike the three efforts are, yet clearly enough distinguished, if one hears them often enough. The best and least of them is the myrtle’s, I being judge.

The yellow palm warbler ought to be a Southerner of the Southerners, one would say, from his tropical appellation; but the truth is that he makes his home from Nova Scotia northward, and visits the land of palms only in the cold season. He is a low-keeping bird (for a warbler), much on the ground, very bright in color, and well marked by a red crown, from which he is often called the yellow redpoll. If he could only keep his tail still!

Next in order was the black-throated green (May 4), which, take him for all in all, is perhaps my favorite of the whole family. He is the bird of the white pine, as the pine warbler is the bird of the pitch-pine. And now we have a real song; no longer a simple trill, but a highly characteristic, sweetly modulated tune--or two tunes, rather, perfectly distinguished one from the other, and equally charming. If the voice is rough, it is sweetly and musically rough. I would not for anything have it different.

What a vexatiously pleasant time I had, years ago, in tracing the voice home to its author! How vividly I remember the day when I lay flat on my face in a woodland path, opera-glass in hand, a manual open before me, and the bird singing at intervals from a pine tree opposite; and a neighbor, who had known me from boyhood, coming suddenly down the path. I may err in my recollection (it was long ago), but I think I heard the music for weeks before I satisfied myself as to the identity of the singer. “Trees, trees, murmuring trees:” so I once translated the first of the two songs; and to this day I do not see how to improve upon the version. He is talking of the Weymouth pine, I like to believe.

Black-and-white creeping warblers have been common since the 4th (under normal weather conditions they should have been here a fortnight sooner), and on the 6th the oven-bird took possession of the drier woods. He looks very little like a warbler, but those who ought to know whereof they speak class him with that family. I have not yet heard his flight song, but he has no idea of keeping silence. As is true of every real artist, he is in love with his part. With what a daintily self-conscious grace he walks the boards! It is a kind of music to watch him. He makes me think continually of the little ghost in Mrs. Slosson’s story. Like that insubstantial reality he is always saying: “Don’t you want to hear me speak my piece?” And whether the answer is yes or no, it is no matter--over he goes with it.

Yesterday my first blue yellow-back was singing, and to-day (May 8) the first chestnut-sides are with me. And there are numbers to follow. From now till the end of the month they will be coming and going--a procession of beauty. In my mind I can already see them: the gorgeous redstart, the lovely blue golden-wing, the splendid magnolia, and the more splendid Blackburnian, the Cape May (a “seldom pleasure”), and the multitudinous blackpoll--these and many others that are no less worthy. At this time of the year a man should have nothing to do but to live in the sun and look at the passing show.

INDEX

INDEX

Alder, 159.
black, 135.

Anemone, 3.

Apple, 51.

Arbutus, trailing, 4, 143.

Asters, 59, 120.

Azalea, swamp, 22.

Barberry, 111, 172.

Bayberry, 136.

Beech, 163.

Bees, 58.

Birch, sweet, 119, 160.

Bittern, 31.
least, 30.

Bitternut, 113.

Blackbird, crow, 120, 240.
red-winged, 39, 240, 241, 254.
rusty, 155.

Blackberry, 172.

Bladderwort, 22.

Blueberry, 123, 136, 166.

Bluebird, 16, 52, 83, 120, 217, 230, 231, 234.

Bobolink, 19, 52, 83.

Butter-and-eggs, 114.

Butterflies, 57, 85, 108.

Canna, 62, 115.

Catbird, 6, 7.

Catnip, 54.

Cat-tail, 28.

Cedar, red, 39, 172.

Checkerberry, 161, 174, 176

Cherry, rum, 123.

Chestnut, 34.

Chewink, 24.

Chickadee, black-capped, 22, 60, 64, 66, 67, 73, 134, 150, 153, 154,
182, 205, 206, 234, 239.

Chicory, 27.

Chipmunk, 182, 226, 227.

Chokecherry, 41.

Clethra, 122.

Clover, rabbit-foot, 23.

Coffee-tree, 125.

Columbine, 3.

Corn, 52.

Cornel, dwarf, 4.

Cowbird, 235.

Cowslip, 3.

Creeper, brown, 155.

Crickets, 65.

Crossbill, red, 154.
white-winged, 154.

Crow, 24, 39, 42, 65, 154.

Dahlia, 115.

Dangleberry, 123, 174.

Desmodium nudiflorum, 36.

Duck, dusky, 102.

Finch, Lincoln, 70.
pine, 155.
purple, 8, 155, 203, 219, 225, 231.

Flicker, 64, 155, 231.

Flycatcher, least, 6.

Forsythia, 2.

Fox, 183, 258.

Frog, spade-foot, 262.
wood, 257.

Frost grape, 111.

Galium, yellow, 21.

Gallinule, Florida, 32.

Gerardia, 36.

Goldenrod, 59, 121.

Goldfinch, 8, 27, 63, 134, 136, 155, 234.

Goose, Canada, 198.

Grass, 50, 76.

Grosbeak, rose-breasted, 5, 47, 72.

Grouse, ruffed, 83, 133, 143, 155.

Gull, black-backed, 108.
herring, 95, 108, 111, 156, 238.

Hardhack, 21, 37, 38, 39.

Hawk, red-shouldered, 239.
marsh, 108, 254.

Heron, great blue, 94.
green, 31.
night, 31.

Holly, 150, 175.

Huckleberry, 123, 172.

Hummingbird, 58, 61, 88.

Indigo-bird, 47, 70.

Jay, blue, 38, 120, 125, 154, 204, 221.

Jewel-weed, 26, 58, 62.

Joe Pye weed, 57.

Kingbird, 6, 24, 40, 52.

Kingfisher, 253.

Kinglet, golden-crowned, 134, 155, 182.

Lady’s-slipper, 4.

Lark, shore, 107.
meadow, 19, 132, 234, 236.

Leucothoë, 164.

Loosestrife, swamp, 57.

Lucky-bug, 57.

Maple, red, 122, 124.
striped, 124.

Maryland yellow-throat, 6, 60.

Mayweed, 54, 114.

Meadow-beauty, 37.

Meadow-sweet, 21.

Morning-glory, 26.

Mullein, 21.

Muskrat, 136, 259.

Nuthatch, red-breasted, 154.
white-breasted, 35, 154, 205, 209, 225, 235.

Old-maid’s pinks, 54.

Old Squaw, 156.

Oriole, Baltimore, 5, 7, 39, 60.

Otter, 259.

Oven-bird, 7, 273.

Owl, screech, 248.

Partridge-berry, 150.

Pennyroyal, 38.

Phœbe, 22, 40, 60, 233, 240.

Pickerel-weed, 29.

Pine, pitch, 35.

Plover, black-bellied, 92, 97, 99.

Quail, 41, 155.

Quince, 115.

Rail, Carolina, 31, 33.
Virginia, 31.

Raspberry, 21.

Redpoll, 153, 154.

Redstart, 7, 12, 55, 274.

Robin, 60, 67, 155, 232, 255.

Rose, swamp, 26.

Sandpiper, pectoral, 98.
red-backed, 99, 109.
white-rumped, 93, 94, 96, 97, 100, 109.

Sassafras, 3, 124, 166.

Saxifrage, 3.

Shadbush, 3.

Shrike, 155, 240.

Snipe, 25, 254.

Snowbird, 134, 154, 155, 234, 252.

Sparrow, chipping, 19, 70, 271.
English, 14, 16, 52, 156.
field, 24, 39.
fox, 235, 244, 250, 255.
grasshopper, 17.
Ipswich, 102.
savanna, 18, 107.
song, 19, 38, 60, 68, 234, 235, 253.
swamp, 13, 22.
tree, 134, 136, 154, 155.
vesper, 19, 24, 253.
white-throated, 6, 69.

Spatter-dock, 29.

Spice-bush, 3, 123, 162.

Squirrel, gray, 118, 227, 259.
flying, 177, 259.
red, 227, 259.

Swallow, barn, 38.
tree, 15, 16, 237.

Swift, 38.

Tanager, scarlet, 36, 47, 60, 72.

Thimbleberry, 21.

Thorn, 111.

Thoroughwort, 38.

Thrasher, brown, 23, 270.

Thrush, northern water, 13, 61, 71.
Swainson, 7, 69.
wood, 7.

Titlark, 93, 94, 102, 107, 108.

Veery, 6, 23.

Vireo, Philadelphia, 71.
red-eyed, 7, 55, 73.
solitary, 23.
warbling, 6, 60, 67.
yellow-throated, 6, 60, 67.

Warbler, black-and-white, 273.
Blackburnian, 274.
blackpoll, 68, 73, 274.
black-throated blue, 10.
black-throated green, 23, 73, 272.
blue golden-winged, 274.
Canadian, 22.
Cape May, 274.
chestnut-sided, 7, 274.
golden, 6, 267.
magnolia, 274.
myrtle, 73, 136, 269.
Nashville, 7, 268.
parula (blue yellow-backed), 6, 274.
pine, 68, 270.
prairie, 7.
yellow palm, 271.

Waxwing, cedar, 8.

Waxwork, Roxbury, 111, 124.

Woodchuck, 182.

Woodcock, 242, 255.

Woodpecker, downy, 114, 154, 205.
hairy, 155.
red-headed, 42.

Wood pewee, 60, 67.

Wren, long-billed marsh, 30.

Yellow-legs, greater, 96, 101.

The Riverside Press
_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._

FOOTNOTES:

[1] 1900.

[2] The formal record will be found in the _Auk_, vol. xviii. p. 394.

[3] How fallible a thing is a man’s memory! The wrapper was not yellow, but green. Yellow was for lemon. So more than one friendly correspondent has made haste to inform me, and the venerable shopkeeper himself has sent me a roll of the “lossengers” to prove it. My compliments to him.

* * * * * *

Transcriber’s note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.