The Birds’ Calendar 
its surroundings, as in looking at theswans. A 
pair of them on a great lake look large and im- 
posing ; twenty of them huddled together in a 
little basin look contemptibly small. 
® 
As one waiting for the morning looks eagerly 
for the first faint flush in the east, so the natu- 
ralist in this latitude by the middle of February 
begins to strain eye and ear for the earliest signs 
of spring. These tokens are found in a slight 
increase of some of the birds, in their passing 
from mere call-notes to twitters, and in an 
occasional sporadic song, like a spring-flower 
caught blooming: beneath the snow. 
On the 16th snow-birds began to twitter, 
the song sparrow broke forth into melody, and 
high on a branch, its bright, ruddy breast never 
more beautiful and welcome, appeared the first 
robin of the season. In these days what a faint 
undercurrent of life now and then bubbles to 
the surface ; just as in a mountainous country, 
long before sunrise, peak after peak is softly 
tipped with rosy light. 
These are delusive days. <A whiff of spring 
to-day gets buried under two feet of snow to- 
morrow. Yet one feels that things are not 
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