BIRD NOTES AFIELD 



There comes a morning during the month of September 

 when a pecuHarly clear, crisp quaHty of the air first suggests 

 the presence of autumn. It is something intangible, inex- 

 pressible, but to me vital and significant of change. In my 

 morning walk I notice the first red tips upon the maple leaves, 

 and catch the first notes of autumn birds. I hear the call of 

 the red-breasted nuthatch, a fine, monotonous, far-away pipe, 

 uttered in a succession of short notes, and upon looking among 

 the live-oaks detect the little fellow hopping about upon the 

 bark. He is a mere scrap of a bird, with a back of bluish 

 gray and a breast of a dull, rusty-red hue, a cap of black and 

 a white stripe over the eye — a veritable gnome of the bark 

 upon which he lives the year round. In its crannies he pries 

 with his strong, sharply pointed beak for his insect food, and 

 in some hollow his little mate lays her eggs and rears her 

 brood. With so many woodpecker traits he nevertheless 

 differs widely in structure from that group, being more closely 

 allied to the wrens and tit-mice. He is with us in greater or 

 less abundance throughout the winter, and his very character- 

 istic call may be heard from time to time both in the University 

 Grounds and in the canons. 



With the nuthatches come, from their northern breeding- 

 places, the pileolated warblers, and other shy wood creatures 

 which haunt the quiet, out-of-the-way nooks, and shrink from 

 the presence of man. The pileolated warbler is one of the love- 

 liest, daintiest creatures that visit us. As I walk in my favorite 

 nook in the hills, Woolsey's Canon, to the north of the Uni- 

 versity Grounds, I see a lithe, active, alert little bird, gleaning 

 for insects among the leaves, now high up among the branches, 

 and again darting hither and thither downward to where the 



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