130 THe Birps Asout Us. 
“‘ Why chidest thou the tardy spring ? 
The hardy bunting does not chide; 
The blackbirds make the maples ring 
With social cheer and jubilee ; 
The red-wing flutes his 0-£a-/ee,” 
and, fluting it, blots out all the disaster that winter 
has wrought. There is no early spring-tide note so 
full of summer; none that warms the landscape so 
much and tempers the March winds till they are 
softened to a zephyr. Few suspect the magic of a 
wild bird’s note, but finding it, the world is tinted in 
more glowing colors. 
There is a brief interim in summer when the red- 
wings are but seldom seen. Not that they really leave 
us, but young and old wander off, and I never traced 
their wanderings ; but in September they are all back, 
and now, congregated in great flocks, they resort to 
the long reaches of marshy meadows along the river. 
Here I have seen them literally by the thousands ; 
and when they are joined, as sometimes happens, by 
flocks of rusty grakles from the north and the crow- 
blackbirds of the neighborhood, there is a tumult of 
voices that cannot be described. I have seen an acre 
of marsh black with birds; so black that the vegeta- 
tion could only be seen as mere narrow ribbons of 
light brown. This does not last long, for the pur- 
pose of flocking is to migrate, and before the weather 
becomes cold or very stormy the greater number of 
these huge flocks have passed southward, but not all. 
I never knew a winter too cold for them, and about 
open water, in meadows with bottom springs, and 
sheltered reedy nooks in woodland tracts a few are 
