MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 19 



chip-bird. I should say he sang about as often during 

 the darkness as cocks crow. One can hardly help fancy- 

 ing that he sings in his dreams. 



" Father of light, what sunnie seed, 

 What glance of day hast thou confined 

 Into this bird ? To all the breed 

 This busie ray thou hast assigned; 

 Their magnetism works all night, 

 And dreams of Paradise and light." 



On second thought, I remember to have heard the cuckoo 

 strike the hours nearly all night with the regularity of a 

 Swiss clock. 



The dead limbs of our elms, which I spare to that 

 end, bring us the flicker every summer, and almost 

 daily I hear his wild scream and laugh close at hand, 

 himself invisible. He is a shy bird, but a few days ago 

 I had the satisfaction of studying him through the 

 blinds as he sat on a tree within a few feet of me. 

 Seen so near and at rest, he makes good his claim to the 

 title of pigeon-woodpecker. Lumberers have a notion 

 that he is harmful to timber, digging little holes through 

 the bark to encourage the settlement of insects. The 

 regular rings of such perforations which one may see in 

 almost any apple-orchard seem to give some probability 

 to this theory. Almost every season a solitary quail 

 visits us, and, unseen among the currant-bushes, calls 

 Bob White, Bob White, as if he were playing at hide-and- 

 seek with that imaginary being. A rarer visitant is the 

 turtle-dove, whose pleasant coo (something like the 

 muffled crow of a cock from a coop covered with snow) I 

 have sometimes heard, and whom I once had the good 

 luck to see close by me in the mulberry-tree. The wild- 

 pigeon, once numerous, I have not seen for many years.* 

 Of savage birds, a hen-hawk now and then quarters him- 

 self upon us for a few days, sitting sluggish in a tree 



* They made their appearance again this summer (1870). 



