ee 
16 ON BOSTON COMMON. 
their side. Of necessity they go elsewhere to 
find nests for themselves, where they may lay 
their young; for they build on the ground, and 
a lawn which is mowed every two or three days 
would be quite out of the question. 
At the best, a public park is not a favorable 
spot in which to study bird music. Species 
that spend the summer here, like the robin, 
the warbling vireo, the red-eyed vireo, the 
chipper, the goldfinch, and the Baltimore ori- 
ole, of course sing freely ; but the much larger 
number which merely drop in upon us by the 
way are busy feeding during their brief sojourn, 
and besides are kept in a state of greater or 
less excitement by the frequent approach of 
passers-by. Nevertheless, I once heard a bob- 
olink sing in our Garden (the only one I ever 
saw there), and once a brown thrush, although 
neither was sufficiently at home to do himself 
justice. The “ Peabody” song of the white- 
throated sparrows is to be heard occasionally 
during both migrations. It is the more wel- 
come in such a place, because, to my ears at 
least, it is one of the wildest of all bird notes ; 
it is among the last to be heard at night in the 
White Mountain woods, as well as one of the 
last to die away beneath you as you climb the 
higher peaks. On the Crawford bridle path, 
for instance, I remember that the song of this 
