318 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



if it had a nest there. This is a splendid and marked 

 bird, high-colored as is the tanager, looking strange in 

 this latitude. Glowing indigo. It flits from top of one 

 bush to another, chirping as if anxious. Wilson says 

 it sings, not like most other birds in the morning and 

 evening chiefiy, but also in the middle of the day. In 

 this I notice it is like the tanager, the other fiery-plu- 

 maged bird. They seem to love the heat. It probably had 

 its nest in one of those bushes. 



SPARROWS, ETC. (MISCELLANEOUS) 



1837-47. It is a marvel how the birds contrive to 

 survive in this world. These tender sparrows that flit 

 from bush to bush this evening, though it is so late, do 

 not seem improvident, [but appear] to have found a 

 roost for the night. They must succeed by weakness 

 and reliance, for they are not bold and enterprising, 

 as their mode of life would seem to require, but very 

 weak and tender creatures. I have seen a little chip- 

 ping sparrow, come too early in the spring, shivering 

 on an apple twig, drawing in its head and striving to 

 warm it in its muffled feathers ; and it had no voice to 

 intercede with nature, but peeped as helpless as an in- 

 fant, and was ready to yield up its spirit and die with- 

 out any effort. And yet this was no new spring in the 

 revolution of the seasons. 



Nov. 9, 1850. A rusty sparrow or two only remains 

 to people the drear spaces. It goes to roost without 

 neighbors. 



June 30, 1851. The cuckoo is faintly heard from a 

 neighboring grove. Now that it is beginning to be dark, 



