844 TTPLANT) AND MEADOW. 



meadows. There appears to have been a fresh arrival 

 of Northern birds, and the fields are filled with tree-spar- 

 rows, snow-birds, white-throated finches, and some unde- 

 termined species. None sang. Why these fits of si- 

 lence I do not know; bnt they are not uncommon. 

 I have watched an individual bird for quite an hour, 

 and not a single chirp has it uttered in all that time. 

 It was a male bird, and bnsy seed-hunting. Female 

 birds never, probably, go half so long without chatter- 

 ing, and I am led to believe that they, far more than 

 males, chirp and twitter in their sleep. 



In the upland pastures, at a later hour, there was sweet 

 music to be heard. An unusual flight of bluebirds were 

 resting there. The gaunt gray stalks of the mullein 

 were each topped with a warbling bluebird singitig with 

 all its springtime ardor. As usual, at this time of the 

 year, these birds were adepts at fly-catching, and at a 

 little distance might readily be taken for pee- wees or 

 king-birds. They were not migrating. So long as I 

 can reniember, they have been wintering in the warm 

 southern exposure of the bluff nearby, and in unusually 

 severe weather seek shelter in cedars, and cosey cran- 

 nies in the stacks of hay and corn-stalks. There is no 

 noticeable accession to their numbers in spring, so I 

 hold them to be here in no sense migratory. The state- 

 ment of Dr. Brewer, in vol. i. p. 63 of " North American 

 Birds," that "in the Middle States, with every mild 

 winter's day, the bluebirds come out from their retreats, 

 and again disappear on the return of severer weather," 

 is not true. They do not appear and disappear in the 

 way he describes. Their movements are not at all af- 



