22 THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS. 



month, and exists to connect April and June, the 

 root with the flower. 



With June the cup is full, our hearts are satisfied, 

 there is no more to be desired. The perfection ol 

 the season, among other things, has brought the per- 

 fection of the song and plumage of the birds. The 

 master artists are all here; and the expectations 

 xcited by the robin and the song-sparrow are fully 

 ustified. The thrushes have all come ; and I sit 

 down upon the first rock, with hands full of the pink 

 azalea, to listen. With me, the cuckoo does not ar- 

 rive till June ; and often the goldfinch, the king-bird, 

 the scarlet tanager delay their coming till then. In 

 the meadows the bobolink is in all his glory ; in the 

 high pastures the field-sparrow sings his breezy ves- 

 per-hymn ; and the woods are unfolding to the music 

 of the thrushes. 



The cuckoo is one of the most solitary birds of our 

 forests, and is strangely tame and quiet, appearing 

 equally untouched by joy or grief, fear or anger. 

 Something remote seems ever weighing upon his 

 mind. His note or call is as of one lost or wander 

 dering, and to the farmer is prophetic of rain. Amid 

 the general joy and the sweet assurance of things, I 

 love to listen to the strange clairvoyant call. Heard 

 ai quarter of a mile away, from out the depths of the 

 forest, there is something peculiarly weird and monk- 

 »sh about it. Wordsworth's lines upon the European 

 ■pecies apply equally well to ours : — 



" blithe new-comer ! I have heard, 

 T hear thee and rejiice : 



