WOODLAND PATHS 



singer. Always he is here by May-day. 

 This morning his rich contralto rang from 

 a birch tip in the pasture where he or some 

 thrush just like him has sung each May- 

 day morning for I do not know how many 

 years. I listened in vain for the chewink, 

 though he too is due. Like the brown 

 thrush he is a thicket-haunting bird, fol- 

 lowing soon on the trail of the fox spar- 

 row, cultivating the underbrush by claw 

 as he does. 



There is no rest for the weary brown 

 leaves of last year, though they may take 

 passage on the March winds to the inmost 

 recesses of the green-brier tangle of the 

 pasture corners. Through March and 

 early April the fox sparrow harries them, 

 and they have hardly settled with a sigh 

 to a brief nap in his trail before the brown 

 thrush and the chewink are at them with 



bill and toe-nail, and these are here for the 

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