along Dearborn Avenue. One of the little fellows took up his abode under the 

 porch of a residence and stayed there for ten days. It is a sorrow to be com- 

 pelled to record that many of these visitors lost their lives at the hands of the 

 street boys. It is particularly sorrowful to record this because the chances are 

 that the owls were doing their full duty in the matter of killing English spar- 

 rows. 



Standing in Graceland cemetery at the height of the bird concert season, 

 and hearing ten songsters at once breaking the silence of the place, J have won- 

 dered whether the birds loved to hear themselves sing. I suppose that they 

 would make music for the world if they were as deaf as posts. I have a reason 

 tor this supposition. Jt is some distance from Graceland cemetery, Chicago, 

 to Goat Island, Niagara River, but I must go that far for my reason. Since 

 New York State has made a park of the island and has enforced rules for the 

 regulation of lawless visitors, the birds have gone back to the place and have 

 made of it their summer home. Goat Island lies in the river on the brink of 

 the precipice between the American and the Canadian Ivills. It is eternally 

 deluged, as one might say. with the roar of the waters. \n places upon Goat 

 Island it is hard to make the human voice heard. I'he season was a little late 

 for the singing of the birds when I visited the island in July. The song spar- 

 row, however, sings every month of the year, and one of these little fellows 

 was perched on the limb of a tree close to the great fall and was trying to let 

 the sight-seeing visitors know that he was singing a solo. The noise of the 

 waters was thunderous. l>irds may have acute ears, but I doubt very much if 

 that song sparrow heard his own sweet strains. lie was prompted to sing, and 

 sing he must, though the song was lost in the roar of the falls. 



There is plenty of excuse for the visitor to Niagara, even though he l)e a 

 bird-lover, for seeing nothing but the ever-changing color beauty of the plunging- 

 water. I did get my eyes away from that magnificenl sight long enough to 

 note that myriads of swallows were passing and repassing through the great 

 cloud of sprav and mist that rises from the rocks where the falling waters strike. 

 People approaching the falls from below on the \enluresome Maid of the .Mist 

 are compelled to wear rubber clothing to escape a drenching from the dashing 

 .spray. It is heavier in places than the heaviest rain, and yet through it the 

 swallows were constantly darting, taking a shower bath without apparently 

 wetting so much as a feather. Most of the birds that 1 saw on that late July 

 morning w^ere tree swallows. They constantly cut through the bars of the 

 Hoating rainbow which in sunshine is ever ]iresent at Niagara. There was no 

 hue in those broad cofor bands more beautiful than the shining green tiial the 

 sunlight brought out as it struck the upper fe.uhers of those darting swallows. 



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