MY WOODLAND INTIMATES 



breasts still remain. A few days ago I counted 

 nearly three hundred in the circle formed by. the 

 carriage drive. But the ranks will soon thin rap- 

 idly, for the cheery fellows, as a body, do not 

 remain with us much later. 



I heard a great and unmistakable commotion in 

 the tree-tops at daybreak this morning. It was 

 evidently a twenty-minutes-for-refreshments ar- 

 rangement. There was the rapid, excited chat- 

 ter of arriving tourists too much din to permit 

 my unpractised ear to distinguish what families 

 were represented then a great whirring of 

 wings, and, by the time I was dressed warmly 

 enough to venture out, the tourists were distant 

 specks and the voices inaudible. 



But by far the noisiest and largest of all the 

 flights that have come to my notice, was an enor- 

 mous body of grackles which passed this way yes- 

 terday. Shortly before six in the morning I 

 heard a sound as of rain descending in torrents. I 

 went to my window with the expectation of seeing 

 drenched trees and a deluged earth, but lo, all was 

 dry, and in the west were none but fair weather 

 indications. Overhead, however, the sky was 

 black, but with a grackle flight, not threatening 

 clouds. I estimated the number of birds roughly 

 [58] 



