96 The Wilson Bulletin — Xo. 108 



A pair of goldfinches, who inade their summer home 

 ill our part of towu and nested in a Lombardy poplar 

 across the way, came often to call. Sometimes it was Mrs. 

 Goldfinch who came, sometimes it was Mr. Goldfinch. 

 Neither of them stayed long at a time, but Mr. Goldfinch 

 came oftener, or at least seemed to do so. It may have 

 been that he made himself more evident, for his sharp call 

 and conspicuous garb would always attract attention. 



The friends of my early boyhood, the bluebirds, came 

 but once to cheer me, but the gentle and sincere greeting 

 they gave me as a reminder of old times touched me deeply. 

 The bluebirds are like those old, tried, true friends in 

 whom our faith never wavers, and of whom a doubt or sus- 

 picion never enters our minds. We may not see them, or 

 hear from them for months or years, but when we do, we 

 know that they have not changed. 



Hardly less welcome than the bluebirds, the red- 

 headed woodpeckers greeted me often. Frequently a pair 

 of them perched on the nearest telephone pole. I am sure 

 they came to call on me, but as they gossiped, they usually 

 grew so interested in their own affairs that they quite for- 

 got me. Not sensitive to their neglect — unintentional it 

 was, I am sure — I thoroughly enjoyed hearing them chat- 

 ter, just the same. 



The evenings of my days were usually lonesome, but 

 then it was that Bob White called to me from the edge of 

 the forestry, and the swallows came sweeping over the va- 

 cant lots, and the swifts fluttering home to their own chim- 

 ney-corners. Now and then a flock of nighthawks came 

 coursing along, stooping in abrupt nose-dives like aviators 

 in training. Always their course lay eastw^ard ; I wished 

 that some of them had stopped to tell me why, for here on 

 the prairies their sunset flight is always into the approach- 

 ing dusk. 



After night-fall the screech owls came to see me. The 

 whole family, five or six, fluttered about my window, i)erch- 

 ing on the clothes-poles, the ridge-pole of the garage, or 



