72 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



himself. Every second is precious. At this 

 precise moment a warbler is above your 

 head, far up in the topmost bough perhaps, 

 half hidden by a leaf. If you miss him, he 

 is gone forever. If you make him out, well 

 and good ; he may be a rarity, a prize long 

 waited for ; or, quite as likely, while busy 

 with him you may let a ten times rarer one 

 pass unnoticed. In this game, as in any 

 other, a man must rim his chances ; though 

 there is skill as well as luck in it, without 

 doubt, and one player will take a trick or 

 two more than another, with the same hand. 

 In the present instance, so far as my 

 canvass showed, the " wave " was made up 

 of myrtle warblers, blackpolls, baybreasts, 

 black-throated greens, a chestnut-side, a 

 Maryland yellow-throat, red-eyed vireos, 

 solitary vireos, one or more scarlet tanagers 

 (in undress, of course, and pretty late 

 by my reckoning), ruby-crowned kinglets, 

 chickadees, winter wrens, goldfinches, song 

 sparrows, and flickers. The last three or 

 four species, it is probable enough, were in 

 the grove only by accident, and are hardly 

 to be counted as part of the south-bound 



