THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS 3 



March morning, but is uncertain of its source or 

 direction; it falls like a drop of rain when no 

 cloud is visible; one looks and listens, but to no 

 purpose. The weather changes, perhaps a cold 

 snap with snow comes on, and it may be a week 

 before I hear the note again, and this time or the 

 next perchance see the bird sitting on a stake in 

 the fence lifting his wing as he calls cheerily to his 

 mate. Its notes now become daily more frequent; 

 the birds multiply, and, flitting from point to point, 

 call and warble more confidently and gleefully. 

 Their boldness increases till one sees them hovering 

 with a saucy, inquiring air about barns and out- 

 buildings, peeping into dove-cotes and stable win- 

 dows, inspecting knotholes and pump-trees, intent 

 only on a place to nest. They wage war against 

 robins and wrens, pick quarrels with swallows, and 

 seem to deliberate for days over the policy of tak- 

 ing forcible possession of one of the mud-houses of 

 the latter. But as the season advances they drift 

 more into the background. Schemes of conquest 

 which they at first seemed bent upon are aban- 

 doned, and they settle down very quietly in their 

 old quarters in remote stumpy fields. 



Not long after the bluebird comes the robin, 

 sometimes in March, but in most of the Northern 

 States April is the month of the robin. In large 

 numbers they scour the fields and groves. You 

 hear their piping in the meadow, in the pasture, on 

 the hillside. Walk in the woods, and the dry 

 leaves rustle with the whir of their wings, the air 



