66 IN BIRD LAND. 
The towhee buntings dropped anchor on the 
seventh of March, filling the woods with their fine, 
explosive trills. It was a pleasant day, a sort of 
oasis in the midst of the stormy weather, and it did 
not seem inapt to speculate a little as to the thoughts 
of these birds on their arrival at their old summer 
haunts, after an absence of four or five months. 
Was the old brush-heap, where they had built their 
nest the previous spring, still there? Had the 
winter storms spared the twig on the sapling where 
Cock Bunting had sung erstwhile his sweetest trills 
to his dusky mate? ‘What if the woodman has 
cleared away our pleasant corner of the woods?” 
whispers Mrs. Towhee to her lord as they approach 
the sequestered spot. How their hearts must bound 
with joy when they find sapling and brush-heap and 
winding woodway all as they had left them in the 
autumn! No wonder they are so tuneful! Even 
the snow-storms that moan and howl through the 
woods a few days later cannot wholly repress their 
exuberant feelings. 
On the same date a whole colony of young song- 
sparrows stopped at this station on their journey 
northward, although you must remember that quite 
a number of their elders remained here through the 
winter. What a twittering these year-old sparrows 
made in the bushes fringing the woods! I actually 
laughed aloud at their crude, tuneless, quasi-musical 
efforts. They were not in good voice, and, besides, 
had not yet fully learned the tunes that are sung in 
sparrowdom, and could not control their vocal 
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