In the Nesting-Season 



By KATHARINE UPHAM HUNTER, West Claremont, N. H. 



IT WAS June; the voices of a thousand birds proclaimed it in the old 

 pasture, in the encroaching forest, in the broad adjacent fields, and in 

 the ancient apple orchard. Never had bird music been richer, more 

 charged with the promise of renewed life and hope. When I awoke, the 

 pleasant voices of my dreams had melted into the liquid, joyous notes of Purple 

 Finches, poured from the elms drooping over the stone house, and quickly I 

 arose to seek the little singers, silhouetted against the mist-encircled mountain 

 and the shining river at its foot. Why, just at that moment, when earth, sky, 

 bird music, and the miracle of recurring dawn wrought their spell upon the 

 listener, should the Brown Thrashers and the Catbirds in the hedge begin 

 their vocal grotesques? 



Then from the pasture came the plaintive, eerie wails of the Upland Plover, 

 and the minor lay of the Vesper and Field Sparrows, their notes seemingly 

 much more cheerful now than when, sometimes at night, their sad singing 

 quavers in the dark. In the field, over the hum of many tiny voices, rose the 

 clear, sweet whistles of the Meadowlark; with a flash of gold, black, and brown 

 plumage and pennant white tail-feathers the bird would mount overhead,, his 

 rich jumble of song lasting till he reached the top of an elm. Over in the 

 orchard the amorous Flicker sent forth his clarion notes, and the Woodpeckers 

 voiced their emotions in a dull, steady drumming. There, too, the jubilant 

 Orioles and the tender Bluebirds warbled and arranged their differing nests. 

 On the edge of the woods the Scarlet Tanagers and the Vireos chirruped, the 

 Ovenbird shrilled, and the busy little Warblers darted and sang their tiny 

 praise. 



Yet all this joyous prelude of bird music and beauty of plumage was not to 

 delight our eyes and ears. The real meaning was hidden away in the grass, 

 the trees, and the bushes. If a mortal found the secret, happy the mortal. If 

 not, happier still the birds, and in either case, perhaps, small difference in the 

 scheme of Eternal Nature. 



But I am a gossip, of a kind, and I needs must go out and see what my bird 

 neighbors were doing. The first that I saw was a Bluebird; she was flying 

 toward a knot of an old apple tree in the orchard, and she had something in 

 her beak; squeakings tell the secret, and a peep into the knot-hole reveals a 

 feathery family of five young Bluebirds. Their baby clothes were grey, tinged 

 with blue. They lisped and stretched their necks, with friendly eyes, and 

 yellow, gaping throats, but when my face greeted them instead of their mother's, 

 they silently withdrew and flattened themselves against the wood of the 

 tree-hole. 



The next discovery was a Meadowlark's nest in the field above the house. 

 Five large white eggs, plentifully speckled with dark spots, lay in a grass nest 



(196) 



