THE COMING OF THE BIRDS. 



THE week between March 8th and 14th was 

 one filled with early spring messages. The air 

 whispered them, and the stems of the willows 

 blushed with joy at what it said. The sun 

 stripped the snow from the earth and found 

 beneath it green grass, buttercup and five- 

 finger leaves and the sage-green velvet of the 

 mullein. Ice moved in the streams and partially 

 melted on the marshes, and its going was hailed 

 with merry music by song-sparrows, bluebirds, 

 and redwing blackbirds. 



Not long after sunrise on Thursday, the 12th, 

 I was in the tangle of rose bushes, willows and 

 rushes, which surrounds the West Cambridge 

 brickyards and clay pits. It was a still, warm 

 morning. Birds were singing on every side. 

 They were not chirping pretty fragments of 

 song, but pouring out in all the plenitude of 

 fearless happiness their greeting to home and a 

 new day. Before 8.30 I saw nearly a dozen 

 song sparrows, a bluebird, a tree sparrow, a 

 flock of twenty-six cedar birds, large numbers 

 of crows, and an Acadian owl. My meeting 



