possible, and the bath and supper very enjoyable after our tramp ; and altogether 

 I passed no pleasanter twenty-four hours during my entire European trip. 



Ten days later, at Sagamore Hill, I was among my own birds, and was much 

 interested as I listened to and looked at them in remembering the notes and 

 actions of the birds I had seen in England. On the evening of the first day I 

 sat in my rocking chair on the broad veranda, looking across the Sound towards 

 the glory of the sunset. The thickly grassed hillside sloped down in front of me 

 to a belt of forest fnoni which rose the golden, leisurely chiming of the wood 

 thrushes, chanting their vespers ; through the still air came the warble of vireo 

 and tanager; and after nightfall we heard the flight song of an oven-bird from 

 the same belt of timber. Overhead an oriole sang in the weeping elm, now and 

 then breaking his song to scold like an overgrown wren. Song-sparrows and cat- 

 birds sang in the shrubbery ; one robin had built its nest over the front and 

 one over the back door, and there was a chippy's nest in the wistaria vine by the 

 stoop. During the next twenty-four hours I saw and heard, either right around 

 the house or while walking down to bathe, through the woods, the following 

 forty-two birds : 



Little green heron, night heron, red-tailed hawk, yellow-billed cuckoo, king- 

 fisher, flicker, humming-bird, swift, meadow-lark, red-winged blackbird, sharp- 

 tailed finch, song-sparrow, chipping-sparrow, bush-sparrow, purple finch, Balti- 

 more oriole, cowbunting, robin, wood thrush, thrasher, catbird, scarlet tanager, 

 red-eyed vireo, yellow warbler, black-throated green warbler, kingbird, wood 

 peewee, crow, blue jay, cedar-bird, Maryland yellowthroat, chickadee, black and 

 white creeper, barn swallow, white-breasted swallow, ovenbird, thistle-finch, 

 vesper-finch, indigo bunting, towhee, grasshopper-sparrow, and screech owl. 



The birds were still in full song, for on Long Island there is little abatement 

 in the chorus until about the second w^eek of July, when the blossoming of the 

 chestnut trees patches the woodland v;ith frothy greenish yellow. 



Our most beautiful singers are the wood thrushes ; they sing not only in the 

 early morning, but throughout the long, hot June afternoons. Sometimes they 

 sing in the trees immediately around the house, and if the air is still we can always 

 hear them from among the tall trees at the foot of the hill. The thrashers sing 

 in the hedgerows beyond the garden, the catbirds everywhere. The catbirds 

 have such an attractive song that it is extremely irritating to know that at any 

 moment they may interrupt it to mew and squeal. The bold, cheery music of the 

 robins always seems typical of the bold, cheery birds themselves. The Baltimore 

 orioles nest in the young elms around the house, and the orchard orioles in the 

 apple trees near the garden and outbuildings. Among the earliest sounds of 

 spring is the cheerful, simple, homely song of the song-sparrow ; and in March 

 we also hear the piercing cadence of the meadow-lark — to us one of the most 

 attractive of all bird calls. Of late years now and then we hear the rollicking, 

 bubbling melody of the Ixibolink in the pastures back of the barn ; and when the 

 full chorus of these and of many other of the singers of spring is dying" down, 



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