1 88 Twelve Months With 



seen in the woods almost any day in November. 

 Unfortunately he does not favor us with his song 

 as he pauses on his migration southward, and I 

 never see him in the woods that I do not long for 

 the power of a Svengali that I might make him 

 sing to me. 



Indeed, so far as the birds are concerned, 

 November might be called the border-line month 

 between summer and winter, "an interlude on win- 

 ter's verge." During this month the last of the 

 migratory birds come to us and pass on to the south, 

 and the first of the northern residents pay us their 

 annual winter visits. Some of our summer resi- 

 dents also remain with us until November, includ- 

 ing the vesper, field, chipping and swamp 

 sparrows, the red-winged and crow blackbirds, the 

 kingfisher and the mourning dove. 



The latter bird is the only dove left to us since 

 the extermination of the beautiful passenger 

 pigeon. He is an old favorite whose cooing, 

 mournful, ventriloquous notes are familiar to us 

 all. 



He was loved by Nathaniel P. Willis : 



" 'Tis a bird I love, with its brooding note 

 And the trembling throb in its mottled throat; 

 There's a human look in its swelling breast, 

 And the gentle curve of its lowly crest." 



Mourning doves are rapid flyers, and often may 

 be seen in pairs, as late as November, scurrying 



