THE PLANT WORLD 95 



room window. My colony of martins has just arrived from their 

 winter quarters. They utter their jubilant notes continually while flying 

 around the nesting boxes and bin houses which I have put up for their 

 accommodation and which they now carefully examine. The last strag- 

 gling phoebes bid us farewell in joyful ecstasy. Bluebirds are also heard 

 now and then, but they neither show their familiar ways, nor do they 

 utter that sweet and happy warble to which we are accustomed since our 

 boyhood days, and which makes the bird the most beloved harbinger of 

 spring at the North. Here they are strange in their ways and not at all 

 familiar, rather timid and of retiring habits, breeding invariably in the 

 piney woods far from human dwellings. The tufted titmouse is a noisy 

 bird in the garden and very inquisitive, and the same may be said of the 

 Carolina chickadee. Of all the bird songs now heard in m}'- gar- 

 den and yard, there is none more gushing, more sparkling and energetic, 

 than that of the Carolina wren. The three last-named birds breed in 

 the nesting boxes which I have placed among the branches of oaks and 

 other trees. My orange grove swarms with chipping and field sparrows. 

 They are all preparing for their northward journey and they will all have 

 left in the course of a few days. The noisiest and most conspicuous bird 

 of the garden is the crested flycatcher, its loud whistling notes being con- 

 stantly heard from early dawn until sunset. It is the most familiar of all 

 the birds here, breeding always in one of the nesting boxes near the house. 

 The pretty little ground doves fearlessly move about among the bananas, 

 crinums, heliconias, alpinias, marantas, strelitzias and kaempferias near 

 the house, always in pairs. Their exceedingly melancholic cooing notes 

 are heard for a long time in the early morning hours. Like the mock- 

 ingbirds, cardinals and shrikes, they prefer to build their nests in the 

 dense, thorny orange trees. That part of the garden which shows a dense 

 growth of Magnolia grandiflora, waxmyrtles, hollies, American olives, 

 cypresses (particularly the Himalayan Cicpressiis torulosa), camphor trees, 

 oleander, myrtles, pittosporums, camellias, grevilleas, and clambering 

 Elaeagnus reflexa, is at present the favorite abode of the thrasher, the 

 catbird, and the white-eyed towhee. Their call-notes are often heard, and 

 the thrasher and towhee are searching the old leaves underneath the 

 densest grov/th for insects. During the preceding season I saw the last 

 catbird as late as May 9. It is always in full song before it leaves and its 

 peculiar cry is often heard during the warm winter days and most fre- 

 quently at present. The pretty little blue-gray gnatcatcher is a perma- 

 nent resident of the garden. I have found its exquisite lichen-covered 

 nest saddled on a horizontal branch of a willow oak as early as April 6. 

 My ornamental grounds are bordered by a small lake — Lake Audubon, as 

 I have named it. A pair of red-winged blackbirds have taken up their 

 abode among the tall grass and sedges. For hours at a time the anhinga, 



