4 Bird -Lore 



a sealed book to you. When your senses take in the Kinglet they 

 will take in a thousand other objects that now escape you. 



My first Warbler in the spring is usually the Yellow Redpoll, which 

 I see in April. It is not a bird of the trees and woods, but of low 

 bushes in the open, often alighting upon the ground in quest of 

 food. I sometimes see it on the lawn. The last one I saw was one 

 April day, when I went over to the creek to see if the suckers were 

 yet running up. The bird was flitting amid the low bushes, now 

 and then dropping down to the gravelly bank of the stream. Its 

 chestnut crown and yellow under parts were noticeable. 



The past season I saw for the first time the Golden-winged 

 Warbler — a shy bird, that eluded me a long time in an old clearing 

 that had grown up with low bushes. The song first attracted my 

 attention, it is so like in form to that of the Black-throated Green 

 Back, but in quality so inferior. The first distant glimpse of the 

 bird, too, suggested the Green Back, so for a time I deceived my- 

 self with the notion that it was the Green Back with some defect 

 in its vocal organs. A day or two later I heard two of them, and 

 then concluded my inference was a hasty one. 



Following one of the birds, I caught sight of its yellow crown, 

 which is much more conspicuous than its yellow wing-bars. Its 

 song is like this, '«-'« de de de, with a peculiar reedy quality, but 

 not at all musical, falling far short of the clear, sweet, lyrical song 

 of the Green Back. 



One appreciates how bright and gay the plumage of many of 

 our Warblers is, when he sees one of them alight upon the ground. 

 While passing along a wood road in June, a male Black-throated 

 Green came down out of the hemlocks and sat for a moment on 

 the ground before me. How out of place he looked, like a bit of 

 ribbon or millinery just dropped there I The throat of this Warbler 

 always suggests the finest black velvet. Not long after I saw the 

 Chestnut-sided Warbler do the same thing. We ware trying to make 

 it out in a tree by the roadside, when it dropped down quickly to 

 the ground in pursuit of an insect, and sat a moment upon the 

 brown surface, giving us a vivid sense of its bright new plumage. 



When the leaves of the trees are just unfolding, or, as Tenny- 

 son sa3's, "When all the woods stand in a mist of green, and noth- 

 ing perfect," the tide of migrating Warblers is at its height. They 

 come in the night, and in the morning the trees are alive with 

 them. The apple trees are just showing the pink, and how closely 

 the birds inspect them in their eager quest for insect food ! One 

 cold, rainy day at this season Wilson's Black-cap, — a bird that is 

 said to go north nearly to the arctic circle, — explored an apple tree 



