6 ON THE COAST OF MAINE 



the air seemed filled with strange sounds. 

 They appeared to come from all points at 

 once, most of them sharp " pip ! pip's ! " 

 like the cry of a lost chicken, with others, 

 indescribable and most confusing, and all 

 loud, emphatic, and utterly strange to me. 



Here was an extraordinary visitation! I 

 sprang up and rushed to the window. There 

 they were, the whole jolly crowd, on a tall 

 balsam-fir close by, a dozen or more, scram- 

 bling about the branches with a thousand 

 antics and shouts of glee. 



Such a merry party I never saw. The 

 greater number wore dresses of olive-green, 

 but some in dull red gave me a hint of their 

 identity, and the crossed bills of all confirmed 

 it. They were crossbills, whose strange utter- 

 ances Longfellow felicitously characterizes as 



" Songs like legends strange to hear." 



This was treasure-trove indeed, for cross- 

 bills are the most erratic of the feathered 

 race in our part of the world, the Bohemians 

 of the bird-world and the despair of the sys- 

 tematist. Wandering about at their own 

 sweet will; having no fixed home that is 



