2 24 'Bk'EW^i^-r, A >i Or/ii//iolog-ic(il Mystery. f^^j'' 



Needless to say we spared no efforts to get a sight of the bird 

 while he was singing in the early evening twilight or, sometimes 

 with the aid of a keen-nosed dog, to flush him by day from the 

 rank vegetation of his ditlicult haunts, but all such attempts 

 proved futile ; and when his singing season waned and finally 

 came to its close, about the end of June, we had obtained no 

 definite evidence as to his identity. 



So far as we know the ' Kicker ' has never since returned to 

 any of the localities above mentioned but I noted one at Falmouth, 

 Massachusetts, in 1890, and in the extensive marshes opposite my 

 camp on the Concord River (about two miles below the town centre 

 of Concord) one was singing on the evening of June 22, 1892, and 

 another nearly every evening from May 18 to June 12, i8g8; 

 while I heard at least three and I think four different birds in 

 these meadows during the last week of June, 1901. 



The Falmouth bird began singing shortly after sunset on June 

 25, near a house at which I had arrived late that afternoon. 

 Whenever I was awake during the following night his merry 

 little crow came distinctly to my ears through the open windows 

 of my room, at the usual short, regular intervals. On the pre- 

 vious evening I had traced the sound to its source, and by a rough 

 process of triangulation had fixed the position of the bird at about 

 the centre of a fresh water meadow that lay just behind the beach 

 ridge in the bottom of a bowl-shaped hollow surrounded by sandy, 

 upland fields and pastures. Early the next morning I examined 

 the place more carefully. The meadow scarce exceeded an acre 

 in extent. Most of it was comparatively dry, and having been 

 burned over the previous autumn or winter was covered only by a 

 short and rather sparse growth of young grass but the course of a 

 sluggish brook and the edges of some intersecting ditches which 

 imperfectly drained it had escaped the fire and were bordered by 

 fringes of tall grasses, weeds and cat-tail flags, representing the 

 growths of several successive seasons. These belts of cover, 

 although dense enough to be impervious to the eye, were so very 

 narrow that it was an easy matter to search them thoroughly and 

 I soon satisfied myself that they sheltered no nest of any kind, 

 not even a sparrow's ; after which I turned my attention to the 

 open ground. I had scarce begun to scan attentively its level,. 



