130 THE BIRDS ABOUT Us. 



" Why chidest thou the tardy spring? 

 The hardy bunting does not chide ; 

 The blackbirds make the maples ring 

 With social cheer and jubilee; 

 The red-wing flutes his o-ka-lee" 



and, fluting it, blots out all the disaster that winter 

 has wrought. There is no early spring-tide note so 

 full of summer ; none that warms the landscape so 

 much and tempers the March winds till they are 

 softened to a zephyr. Few suspect the magic of a 

 wild bird's note, but finding it, the world is tinted in 

 more glowing colors. 



There is a brief interim in summer when the red- 

 wings are but seldom seen. Not that they really leave 

 us, but young and old wander off, and I never traced 

 their wanderings ; but in September they are all back, 

 and now, congregated in great flocks, they resort to 

 the long reaches of marshy meadows along the river. 

 Here I have seen them literally by the thousands ; 

 and when they are joined, as sometimes happens, by 

 flocks of rusty grakles from the north and the crow- 

 blackbirds of the neighborhood, there is a tumult of 

 voices that cannot be described. I have seen an acre 

 of marsh black with birds ; so black that the vegeta- 

 tion could only be seen as mere narrow ribbons of 

 light brown. This does not last long, for the pur- 

 pose of flocking is to migrate, and before the weather 

 becomes cold or very stormy the greater number of 

 these huge flocks have passed southward, but not all. 

 I never knew a winter too cold for them, and about 

 open water, in meadows with bottom springs, and 

 sheltered reedy nooks in woodland tracts a few are 



