20 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 



after a surfeit of poultry. One of them once offered me 

 a near shot from my study-window one drizzly day for 

 several hours. But it was Sunday, and I gave him the 

 benefit of its gracious truce of God. 



Certain birds have disappeared from our neighborhood 

 within my memory. I remember when the whippoorwill 

 could be heard in Sweet Auburn. The night-hawk, once 

 common, is now rare. The brown thrush has moved far- 

 ther up country. For years I have not seen or heard 

 any of the larger owls, whose hooting was one of my boy- 

 ish terrors. The cliff-swallow, strange emigrant, that 

 eastward takes his way, has come and gone again in my 

 time. The bank-swallows, wellnigh innumerable during 

 my boyhood, no longer frequent the crumbly cliff of the 

 gravel -pit by the river. The barn-swallows, which once 

 swarmed in our barn, flashing through the dusty sun- 

 streaks of the mow, have been gone these many years. 

 My father would lead me out to see them gather on the 

 roof, and take counsel before their yearly migration, as 

 Mr. White used to see them at Selborne. Eheu, fugaces ! 

 Thank fortune, the swift still glues his nest, and rolls his 

 distant thunders night and day in the wide-throated chim- 

 neys, still sprinkles the evening air with his merry twit- 

 tering. The populous heronry in Fresh Pond meadows 

 has been wellnigh broken up, but still a pair or two 

 haunt the old home, as the gypsies of Ellangowan their 

 ruined huts, and every evening fly over us riverwards, 

 clearing their throats with a hoarse hawk as they go, and, 

 in cloudy weather, scarce higher than the tops of the 

 chimneys. Sometimes I have known one to alight in 

 one of our trees, though for what purpose I never could 

 divine. Kingfishers have sometimes puzzled me in the 

 same way, perched at high noon in a pine, springing their 

 watchman's rattle when they flitted away from my curi- 

 osity, and seeming to shove their top-heavy heads along 

 as a man does a wheelbarrow. 



