Song Birds and Water Fowl 
our loftiest thoughts. Well might Celia Thaxter 
say of the swallow, 
‘* A spark of the gladness of God thou art!” 
Next below the aérial group is the one that 
comprises the mass of all our singing birds, 
among which are a very few, like the goldfinch, 
the bobolink, and the blue-gray gnatcatcher, 
that show some affinity with their songless con- 
fréres of the upper air, in the luxury of wanton, 
aimless chase. The song birds and kindred 
families, being commonly found among the 
trees, where they chiefly nest and sing, and 
rarely soaring above them for any prolonged 
excursion, may properly be called the arboreal 
group. This contains the most musical, as well 
as the majority of the most beautiful in form 
and plumage of all the race; and yet our fuller 
appreciation of them is not a little due to the 
closer approximation of their habitat to our 
own daily life. By insensible gradations through 
woodpeckers, nuthatches, etc., that are less vol- 
itant, and more closely adherent to trees; owls, 
parrots, and whippoorwills, that are still more 
sedentary ; and meadow larks and _ sea-side 
finches, that are conspicuously ground birds, 
we descend to what may be called the terrestrial 
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