124. ON THE UPPER ST. JOHN’S. 
—all freshly planted, like the city — were 
myrtle warblers, prairie warblers, and blue 
yellowbacks, the two latter in song. Once, 
after a shower, I watched a myrtle bird 
bathing on a branch among the wet leaves. 
The street gutters were running with sulphur 
water, but he had waited for rain. I com- 
mended his taste, being myself one of those to 
whom water and brimstone is a combination 
as malodorous as it seems unscriptural. 
Noisy boat-tailed grackles, or “ jackdaws,” 
were plentiful about the lakeside, mon- 
strously long in the tail, and almost as 
large as the fish crows, which were often 
there with them. Over the broad lake 
swept purple martins and white-breasted 
swallows, and nearer the shore fed peace- 
fully a few pied-billed grebes, or dabchicks, 
birds that I had seen only two or three 
times before, and at which I looked more 
than once before I made out what they 
were. ‘They had every appearance of pass- 
ing a winter of content. At the tops of 
three or four stakes, which stood above the 
water at wide intervals, — and at long dis- 
tances from the shore, — sat commonly as 
many cormorants, here, as everywhere, with 
