222 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 



redwing blackbird ; they are birds of the farm 

 or the meadow, not of the twilight. I listened. 

 " Teacher, teacher, TEACHER," came the call of 

 the ovenbird ; then followed the bold, spar- 

 kling song of the water thrush, the tambourine 

 music of the veery, conversational cawing and 

 chortling of crows, and the familiar chick-a- 

 dee-dee-dee of the titmouse. Were these the 

 principal owners of the shades ? The ringing 

 notes of a rose-breasted grosbeak, the quank, 

 quank of a Canada nuthatch, a black-and-white 

 creeper's apology for a song, and then a thin 

 painstaking voice I did not recognize, came to 

 show that the roll of the swamp's tenants was not 

 complete. Just as I made out the last singer to 

 be a black-throated blue warbler, a winter wren 

 sang. The brilliancy of this petulant brown and 

 white atom's music is one of the wonders of the 

 northern woods. It is orchestral in nature 

 rather than vocal, and it is one of the longest 

 songs I know. It seems to me like falling drops 

 of crystal water in which the sunbeams play and 

 give out rainbow tints. If I tried to describe 

 it I should say it was like the music of tiny 

 spheres of silver, falling upon slabs of marble 

 and rebounding only to fall again and again at 

 briefer intervals, until their perfectly clear, ring- 

 ing notes had run into one high, expiring tone too 

 delicate for the ear of man to follow. The wren 



