104 BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS 



wing music, that sets you dancing, too, as no other 

 bird music you ever heard. 



It is dusk in the swale. I am sitting on the 

 root of one of the red maples, now in misty gar- 

 net bloom, for it is May. A wavering line of 

 piping hylas (the little tree frogs) marks the 

 course of the stream. Scattered bird-calls come 

 from the covert, and out of the deepening blue 

 overhead falls a flock of notes, the chinks of mi- 

 grant birds winging north. 



Presently, in the grassy level across the stream, 

 sounds a clear peent! peent! peent! I listen, half 

 rising. Peent! peent! peent! slow and regular; 

 then, bursting from cover with the rush of a sky 

 rocket, spins the woodcock. Out against the gray 

 horizon he sweeps, and round on the first turn of 

 his soaring spiral. The hum of his wings fills the 

 swale. Round and round, swifter and swifter, 

 the hum rising shrill as he mounts two hundred 

 three hundred four hundred feet into the dusky 

 sky, and hangs hangs a whirling blur in the blue, 

 and drops headlong, with a pitching, zigzag 

 flight that has the velocity of a bullet, and whis- 

 tling, as he falls, a low, pearly thrill of love that 

 is smothered in the whir-r-r-r of his alighting 

 wings. 



