378 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



July 21, 1851. Never yet did I chance to sit in a house, 

 except my own house in the woods, and hear a wood 

 thrush sing. Would it not be well to sit in such a cham- 

 ber within sound of the finest songster of the grove? 



Aug. 12, 1851. The birds utter a few languid and 

 yawning notes, as if they had not left their perches, so 

 sensible to light to wake so soon, — a faint peeping 

 sound from I know not what kind, a slight, innocent, 

 half-awake sound, like the sounds which a quiet house- 

 wife makes in the earliest dawn. Nature preserves her 

 innocence like a beautiful child. I hear a wood thrush 

 even now, long before sunrise, as in the heat of the day. 

 And the pewee and the catbird and the vireo (red- 

 eyed?). I do not hear — or do not mind, perchance — 

 the crickets now. Now whip-poor-wills commence to 

 sing in earnest, considerably after the wood thrush. The 

 wood thrush, that beautiful singer, inviting the day once 

 more to enter his pine woods. (So you may hear the 

 wood thrush and whip-poor-will at the same time.) Now 

 go by two whip-poor-wills, in haste seeking some coverts 

 from the eye of day. And the bats are flying about on 

 the edge of the wood, improving the last moments of their 

 day in catching insects. The moon appears at length, not 

 yet as a cloud, but with a frozen light, ominous of her 

 fate. The early cars sound like a wind in the woods. The 

 chewinks make a business now of waking each other up 

 with their low yorrick in the neighboring low copse. 



June 23, 1852. The wood thrush sings at all hours. 

 I associate it with the cool morning, sultry noon, and 

 serene evening. At this hour ^ it suggests a cool vigor. 



^ [Early morning.] 



