BIRDS AND BRIGHT LEAVES 75 



from it. It was visible music. Again and again 

 I watched him. The dear little chorister ! No- 

 body's birthday was ever more prettily honored. 

 He "sang to my eye " indeed in a daintily 

 literal sense such as the poet never thought of. I 

 wonder if any one, anywhere, ever saw and heard 

 the like. 



The white-crowns have been surprisingly musi- 

 cal (the weather, no doubt, being a provocation), 

 but I have not once heard their spring song, or 

 anything which to my ear none too well accus- 

 tomed to it has seemed to bear any relation 

 thereto. Song sparrows, on the other hand, while 

 mostly contenting themselves with incoherent, 

 sotto^voce twitterings, have now and then al- 

 most daily, I think varied the programme 

 with more or less successful attempts at a fuller- 

 voiced and more formal melody. As for the ves- 

 per sparrows, they have mainly kept silence, but 

 on one or two bright mornings have sung as 

 sweetly as ever they do in May. Indeed, I might 

 truthfully say more than that ; for at this season, 

 when all bright things are taking leave, a strain 

 of wild music is more grateful to the ear than by 

 any possibility it can be when every newly green 

 bush is part of the universal choir gallery. 



To us who have been in the habit of coming to 

 this valley in bright-leaf time nothing is more 



