XIV 

 BIRDS OF CHOCORUA 



Some May Songsters of the Frank Bolles 

 Hinterland 



To all who love the lore of woodland life the 

 country up around Chocorua lake and mountain 

 must always be haunted by the gentle spirit of 

 Frank Bolles, whose books, all too few, breathe 

 the very essence of its perennial charm. To 

 nature lovers who come year after year to the 

 place these books are a litany, and all the bird 

 songs are echoes of the notes he loved. Nor need 

 there be an hour of the twenty-four in this re- 

 gion, in May, in which the birds do not sing. No 

 night is too dark for the wistful plaint of the 

 whip-poor-wills, wandering voices that seem born 

 of the loneliness of the bare places in the hills 

 before man was. To the wakeful ear their 

 sorrow hardly seems soothing, yet when drowsi- 

 ness comes from long days in the mountain air 

 the whip-poor-will's plaint is a primal, preadamite 



