hurried and flustered at sight of me, and nearing 

 the end of a high branch was in the act of springing, 

 when the dead tip cracked under him and he came 

 tumbling headlong. The height must have been 

 forty feet, so that before he reached the ground he 

 had righted himself, his tail out and legs spread, 

 but the fall was too great. He hit the earth with 

 a dull thud, and before I could reach him lay dead 

 upon the needles, with blood oozing from his eyes 

 and nostrils. 



Unhoused and often unsheltered, the wild things 

 suffer as we hardly yet understand. No one can esti- 

 mate the deaths of a year from severe cold, heavy 

 storms, high winds and tides. I have known the nests 

 of a whole colony of gulls and terns to be swept away 

 in a great storm ; and I have seen the tides, over 

 and over, flood the inlet marshes, and drown out 

 the nests in the grass, those of the clapper-rails 

 by thousands. 



I remember a late spring storm that came with 

 the returning redstarts and, in my neighborhood, 

 killed many of them. Toward evening of that day 

 one of the little black and orange voyageurs flut- 

 tered against the window and we let him in, wet, 



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