A BIRD-LOVER’S APRIL. 235 
25th), flitting about the woods like ghosts. I 
whistled softly to the first, and he condescended 
to answer with a low chuck, after which I could 
get nothing more out of him. This demure 
taciturnity is very curious and characteristic, 
and to me very engaging. The fellow will 
neither skulk nor run, but hops upon some low 
branch, and looks at you, — behaving not a lit- 
tle as if you were the specimen and he the stu- 
dent! And in such a case, as far as I can see, 
the bird equally with the man has a right to his 
own point of view. 
The hermits were not yet in tune; and with- 
out forgetting the fox-colored sparrows and the 
linnets, the song sparrows and the bay-wings, 
the winter wrens and the brown thrush, I am 
almost ready to declare that the best music of 
the month,came from the smallest of all the 
month’s birds, the ruby-crowned kinglets. Their 
spring season is always short with us, and un- 
happily it was this year shorter even than usual, 
my dates being April 23d and May oth. But 
we must be thankful for a little, when the little 
is of sucha quality. Once I descried two of them 
in the topmost branches of a clump of tall ma- 
ples. For a long time they fed in silence; then 
they began to chase each other about through 
the trees, in graceful evolutions (I can imagine 
nothing more graceful), and soon one, and then 
