6 ON BOSTON COMMON. 
forbearance toward me, when I modestly profess 
that within the last seven or eight years I have 
watched there some thousands of specimens, 
representing not far from seventy species. 
Of course the principal part of all the birds to 
be found in such a place are transient visitors 
merely. In the long spring and autumn jour- 
neys it will all the time be happening that 
more or less of the travelers alight here for rest 
and refreshment. Now it is only a straggler 
or two; now a considerable flock of some one 
species; and now a miscellaneous collection of 
perhaps a dozen sorts. 
One of the first things to strike the observer 
is the uniformity with which such pilgrims arrive 
during the night. He goes his rounds late in 
the afternoon, and there is no sign of anything 
unusual; but the next morning the grounds are 
populous, —thrushes, finches, warblers, and 
what not. And as they come in the dark, so 
also do they go away again. With rare excep- 
tions you may follow them up never so closely, 
and they will do nothing more than fly from 
tree to tree, or out of one clump of shrubbery 
into another. Once in a great while, under 
some special provocation, they threaten a longer 
flight ; but on getting high enough to see the 
unbroken array of roofs on every side they 
speedily grow confused, and after a few shift- 
