194 



SHARP EYES 



shrill pipe of finer quality, without quaver or trill, which 

 is quite as much wrapt in mystery as to its source as 

 that of the tree-toad, except that it proceeds somewhere 

 from the boughs over our heads, a note that brings 

 back the spring again. For this is the same shrill peep 

 that ushers in the April from the ripples of the swamp 

 the Hylodes, now turned acrobat, as much at home 

 here among the trees as we saw him in the bog last 

 March. We hear his pipe, and occasionally catch a 

 glimpse of the piper jumping across the brown dead 

 leaves, himself as brown as they, but the piper and the 

 pipe are rarely caught together. 



The brown leaves also claim another protege" dressed 

 to their liking, whose somewhat coarse clucking note 

 occasionally joins the shrill peep of the Hylodes. We 

 may see him jump, and might yet almost fail to find 

 him again, so perfect is his disguise, were it not for that 

 telltale black cheek which he wears the wood-frog, an- 

 other dweller of the spring swamp out for a few months' 

 airing. 



. But the rarest and most mysterious of all these forest 

 peepers yet remains to be described. Many of us have 

 heard his sprightly plaint without knowing where to 

 place the credit. Burroughs, I believe, is the first to 

 have traced the music to its source, and caught the mu- 

 sician in the act. He tells of his discovery as follows: 



" For years I have been trying to ascertain for a cer- 

 tainty the author of that fine plaintive peeping to be 

 heard more or less frequently according to the weather 

 in our summer and autumn woods. It is a note that 

 much resembles that of our small marsh frogs in spring 

 the Hylodes. It is not quite so clear and assured, 

 but otherwise much the same. Of a warm October day 



