A BIRD MEDLEY 75 
instinct prompts them to creep away into some hole 
or under some cover, where they will be least 
liable to fall a prey to their natural enemies. It is 
doubtful if any of the game-birds, like the pigeon 
and grouse, ever die of old age, or the semi-game 
birds, like the bobolink, or the ‘‘century living” 
crow; but in what other form can death overtake 
the hummingbird, or even the swift and the barn 
swallow? Such are true birds of the air; they may 
be occasionally lost at sea during their migrations, 
but, so far as I know, they are not preyed upon by 
any other species. 
The valley of the Hudson, I find, forms a great 
natural highway for the birds, as do doubtless the 
Connecticut, the Susquehanna, the Delaware, and 
all other large watercourses running north and 
south. The birds love an easy way, and in the 
valleys of the rivers they find a road already graded 
for them; and they abound more in such places 
throughout the season than they do farther inland. 
The swarms of robins that come to us in early 
spring are a delight to behold. In one of his 
poems Emerson speaks of 
“ April’s bird, 
Blue-coated, flying before from tree to tree; ’? 
but April’s bird with me is the robin, brisk, vocif- 
erous, musical, dotting every field, and larking it in 
every grove; he is as easily atop at this season as 
the bobolink is a month or two later. The tints of 
April are ruddy and brown, — the new furrow and 
the leafless trees, — and these are the tints of its 
dominant bird. 
