NOTES BY THE WAY 153 



frost will stop the crevasse again, but only for a 

 brief season. 



Between the 10th and the loth of March, in the 

 Middle and Eastern States, we are pretty sure to 

 have one or more of these spring days. Bright 

 days, clear days, may have been plenty all winter; 

 but the air was a desert, the sky transparent ice: 

 now the sky is full of radiant warmth, and the air 

 of a half-articulate murmur and awakening. How 

 still the morning is! It is at such times that we 

 discover what music there is in the souls of the 

 little slate-colored snowbirds. How they squeal, 

 and chatter, and chirp, and trill, always in scattered 

 troops of fifty or a hundred, filling the air with a 

 fine sibilant chorus! That joyous and childlike 

 "chew," "chew," "chew" is very expressive. 

 Through this medley of finer songs and calls, there 

 is shot, from time to time, the clear, strong note of 

 the meadowlark. It comes from some field or tree 

 farther away, and cleaves the air like an arrow. 

 The reason why the birds always appear first in the 

 morning, and not in the afternoon, is that in migra- 

 ting they travel by night, and stop and feed and 

 disport themselves by day. They come by the owl 

 train, and are here before we are up in the morning. 



A LONE QUEEN 



Once, while walking in the woods, I saw quite 

 a large nest in the top of a pine-tree. On climbing 

 up to it, I found that it had originally been a crow's 

 nest. Then a red squirrel had appropriated it; he 



