A Book on Birds 



yet quite sufficient to make God^s open air 

 tenderly suggestive on many a frosty after- 

 noon from December to middle March. 



But really the interval of empty days 

 of absence in field and forest has had very 

 narrow Umits during the winter in which 

 I write. 



Indeed, it was probably never before so 

 brief. Even the summer birds — the Robin, 

 the Blackbird, Meadow Lark, Golden- 

 winged Woodpecker, Killdeer, Bluebird 

 and others, remained, many of them, almost 

 until Christmas, and reappeared early in 

 February; so that they were at no time 

 very far away. 



For nearly a month past, on sunlit 

 mornings, the note of the Bluebird — the 

 bird ^^with the earth tinge on his breast 

 and the sky tinge on his back,'' has fallen 

 mysteriously as I passed along the road, 

 '4ike a drop of rain when no cloud is vis- 

 ible"; and during quite as long a time the 

 spurting, gurgling strains of the Blackbird 

 — who has real music in his voice only in 

 earliest spring-time — have filled the tops 



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