26 IN BIRD LAND. 
execution almost perfect. Ever since that day I 
have been the avowed friend of the catbird, — in 
truth, his champion, ready at any moment, in 
season and out, to take up the glove in his defence 
against every assailant. Some very self-conscious 
human performers — people who themselves live in 
glass houses — have accused him of singing to be 
heard, making him out vain and ambitious. Well, 
what if he does? Why do his human compeers 
sing or speak or write? Certainly not purely for 
their own delectation, but also, in part at least, to 
catch the appreciative ear and eye of the public, and 
win a bit of applause. ‘“ Let him that is without sin 
among you first cast a stone.’”’ He who scoffs at 
my plumbeous-hued choralist makes me his enemy, 
—not the choralist’s, but the scoffer’s. So let the 
latter beware ! 
I leave the cat-bird, however, to his own resources 
— he is well able to take care of himself —to tell 
what the birds were doing during a recent spring, 
which fought in a very desultory manner its battle 
with the north winds. Special attention is called to 
the laggard character of the season because a tardy 
spring is a sore ordeal to the student of bird life, 
postponing many of his most longed-for investiga- 
tions. ‘The spring to which I refer (1892) was pro- 
vokingly slow in its approach, and yet it developed 
some traits of bird character that were interesting. 
For instance, the first week in April was a seducer, 
being quite bland, starting the buds on many trees, 
and putting the migrating fever into the veins of a 
