WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



bud, tearing open the seed-case of the wild-rose 

 whose blossom they shook to pieces as they darted 

 to their nests in early June. The brown grass- 

 finch — easily recognized by the two white feathers 

 shown in the tail when flying — seems scarcely 

 ever to leave the field in which it was born. It is 

 emphatically a bird of the meadows, where its 

 song is heard loudest in the long summer twilights 

 when most other birds are silent, so that Wilson 

 Flagg called it the vesper sparrow. Building its 

 nest in a little hollow on the ground, finding its 

 food among the grass, it seems hardly to fly over 

 the boundary fence from one year's end to another. 

 How these finches are able to stand the winter in 

 the open fields is a mystery; perhaps they go 

 elsewhere at night, or crawl into holes; but you 

 may meet them scudding across the uplands every 

 month of the year, keeping company with the 

 few meadow-larks that remain. 



All this month, in hedge-rows, wooded hollows, 

 and thickets, beside springs of water, where very 

 likely you may flush a woodcock, will be heard the 

 low warble of the tree-sparrows. Northern cousins 

 of the trilling chippy of our lilac-bushes, and of 

 the pretty field-sparrow that from every green 

 pasture calls out, C-r-e-e-p, c-r-e-e-p, c-r-e-e-p, 



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