Spring on the Kankakee 107 



rolled out the syllables one after another. I have read in one 

 of the books that William calls for his thrashing five times in 

 succession, and then pauses for a while before he begins his 

 plea again. My birds, like those of Dr. Abbott, are always 

 doing something contrary to the books. That Kankakee 

 whippoorwill certainly made no pause for breath until we 

 were well out of hearing. At the time that I had read the 

 statement that the bird rested after calling five times, I sought 

 a whippoorwill haunt for the sole purpose of testing the 

 matter. When darkness had settled over the wood, one of 

 the birds began calling. I counted fifty-eight "whippoor- 

 wills" uttered in rapid succession. I gave up the task, firmly 

 convinced that it is rarely safe to put down anything as a bird 

 rule without making due allowance for exceptions. 



Another Kankakee Valley whippoorwill sang me to sleep 

 that night, and during the occasional wakeful moments caused 

 by the newness of the surroundings I heard him still calling. 

 The night bird's voice was mingling in my dreams with a note 

 of sweeter substance when I woke to a consciousness that day 

 was breaking, and that an oriole was giving it a jubilant wel- 

 come from a maple at the window. Enthusiasm took all three 

 of us afield before breakfast for an hour with the birds. One 

 of the soft maples in the dooryard. our host told us, had for 

 four successive years been the home of a pair of orioles. He 

 was firmly convinced that the two birds which were then at 

 his door were his friends of other years. In the maple next 

 the oriole home site was the empty tenement of a warbling 

 vireo. My companions had visited the valley the year before, 

 and had found the vireo nest when it held its treasure of eggs. 

 They told me how the father bird relieved his patient wife of 

 her household duties at intervals during the day, and how all 



