PEPACTON 



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 scat- 

 tered troops of fifty or a hundred, filling the air 

 with a fine sibilant chorus ! That joyous and child- 

 like "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 migrat- 

 ing 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 

 had filled up the cavity with the fine inner bark of 

 the red cedar, and made himself a dome-shaped nest 

 upon the crow's foundation of coarse twigs. It is 

 probable that the flying squirrel, or the white-footed 

 mouse, had been the next tenants, for the finish of 

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