SCHOOL DEPARTMENT 



Edited by MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 



Address all communications to the Editor of the School Department, National 

 Association of Audubon Societies. 141 Broadway, New York City 



APRIL 



April is the dawn of the natural year. March is a sprinji; month merely by 

 courtesy— a sort of delusive "twilight," as Wilson Flagg said of it — through 

 which familiar shapes flit, appearing and disappearing like wind-blown phan- 

 toms. March may respond to the sudden lure of the south wind and, 

 yielding a little, show us a few hepaticas on a sheltered bank, a trembling 

 group of snowdrops in a garden corner, or the raised cowl of the skunk- 

 cabbage in the still ice-edged marsh. The flocks of Robins, Bluebirds and 

 Fox Sparrows may bring melody to the leafless trees, while the Meadow- 

 lark returns to the lowland pastures in company with his squeaking and 

 creaking cousins, the Crackles, Redwings and Cowbirds, and the Phoebe 

 vies with the Chickadee in telling his name about the sheds and outbuild- 

 ings. Or March may mean that the hope born of the lengthened days is 

 deferred by snow-squalls that check both insect and vegetable life and drive 

 the early birds disconsolately to mope in cover. 



But with April all is different. To be sure, the old fields lie sere and 

 brown for the greater part of the month, edged and threaded here and there 

 by green ribbons born of watercourses, while on hillside and open woodlands 

 the verdure is of moss rather than grass; yet everywhere the change quivers 

 on the air, and the cheerful chorus of the hylas rises from the reed -beds and 

 makes the heart beat faster. For after all, northward from the middle part 

 of the country, it is by sounds rather than by sight that the season takes 

 possession of the senses and makes us realize that it has come. It is by the 

 bird and not by leaf or flower that Spring first proclaims herself; the flower 

 lies next to the heart of earth, and one would think should be the first 

 to feel the pulse of renewal; but no, it is to the bird of the air that the 

 vision below the visible horizon belongs and, as if seeing the glow of the 

 spring sun before it has reached us, the birds arrive as heralds to proclaim it. 

 Already, when April comes, the Woodcock is practicing his sky dance, 

 and a snow flurry during the first half of the month may whiten the back 

 of his mate brooding on her nest among the protecting leaves with which 

 her colors blend. In April two bird families send their members with a 

 rush. The flocks of Fox Sparrows increase and pause on their northerly 

 migration. The White-throats, traveling in still more leisurely fashion, pause 



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