218 WALKS ABOUT TALLAHASSEE. 



and further still, in a woody swamp, stood 

 three little blue herons, one of them in white 

 plumage. In the drier and more open parts 

 of the way cardinals, mocking-birds, and 

 thrashers were singing, ground doves were 

 cooing, quails were prophesying, and logger- 

 head shrikes sat, trim and silent, on the 

 telegraph wire. In the pine lands were 

 plenty of brown-headed nuthatches, full, as 

 always, of friendly gossip ; two red-shoul- 

 dered hawks, for whom life seemed to wear 

 a more serious aspect ; three Maryland yel- 

 low throats ; a pair of bluebirds, rare enough 

 now to be twice welcome ; a black-and-white 

 creeper, and a yellow redpoll warbler. In 

 the same pine woods, too, there was much 

 good music: house wrens, Carolina wrens, 

 red-eyed and white-eyed vireos, pine war- 

 blers, yellow-throated warblers, blue yellow- 

 backs, red-eyed chewinks, and, twice wel- 

 come, like the bluebirds, a Carolina chicka- 

 dee. 



A little beyond this point, in a cut through 

 a low sand bank, I found two pairs of rough- 

 winged swallows, and stopped for some time 

 to stare at them, being myself, meanwhile, 

 a gazing-stock for two or three negroes 



