134 Bird - Lore 



autumn visit, who share the red fruit with its owner, eating the pulp and leaving 

 the hard seeds to grow. 



Who has bordered the tumble-down wall between the wild and the culti- 

 vated with currants, black cherries, raspberries, traihng briars and a score of 

 wild vines, until it is a thing of beauty that man's hand could not replace. 

 That .Quakeress, the Cedar Bird, the Catbird who owns the big syringa, and a 

 row of tenant bushes, opposite the foxglove walk, as well as the wire clothes- 

 line and all the poles, the boisterous Robins of the hemlock roost, and the 

 Wood Thrush, with his note of "harp and zither and flageolet," Ah, well! 

 to the victor belong the spoils in more than one sense; and what temporal 

 gain would one not forego for the sake of having a quartet of male Wood 

 Thrushes in the garden! For two years this has been our joy. Two sing close 

 above the pool, one above the garden-house, and the fourth in the pines of the 

 wild walk. Today, I am wondering how many will return. Sunday brought 

 the Wrens back; today, Mayday, the Catbirds; tomorrow should bring the 

 Wood Thrush, and next week the Oriole. Meanwhile, I am at present bent 

 upon oiling my silent little rifle, lying low at twilight, — administering Old Testa- 

 ment justice to that cat ; and may the ghosts of the four little Robins make 

 my hand steady and my aim true. Otherwise, there will lie a shadow of re- 

 proach upon the garden in this nesting-time — a thickly-formed shadow — with 

 quickly unsheathed claws and breathing treachery — a specter of the great 

 honeysuckle from which the Oriole 



"Twitches the fibrous bark away 

 The cordage of his hammock-nest; 

 Cheering his labor with a note 

 Rich as the orange of his throat." 



Listen — Would-be Protectors of Birds! It is time to look yourselves and 

 your cats seriously in the face. Ours is, in a great measure, the responsibility 

 for the loss of life in the nesting season, at least in our gardens. In your un- 

 reasonable defense of cats, you but show your own feline side, for then the 

 birds have double and other duties, as Lowell said of the Oriole: 



Thy duty, winged flame of spring, 

 Is but to love, and fly and sing. 



