220 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



lovely contralto notes of the bluebird who from 

 mid-sky calls down, "Faraway, faraway, faraway," 

 the song of the white-throated sparrow is tantaliz- 

 ingly brief and simple in its phrasing. Up in Canada 

 the guides call the bird the "widow- woman." Usu- 

 ally its song, except in the spring, is incomplete and 

 apt to flatten a little on some of the notes; but to- 

 day it rang through the rain as true and compelling 

 as when it wakes me, from the syringa and lilac bushes 

 outside my sleeping-porch, some May morning. 



Through the dripping boughs I pressed far into the 

 very centre of the wood. In a tangle of greenbrier 

 sounded a series of sharp irritating chips, and a cardi- 

 nal, blood-red against the leaden sky, perched himself 

 on a bough of a hornbeam sapling. As I watched him 

 sitting there in the cold rain, he seemed like some bird 

 of the tropics which had flamed his way north and 

 would soon go back to the blaze of sun and riot of 

 color where he belonged. Yet the cardinal grosbeak 

 stays with us all winter, and I have seen four of the 

 vivid males at a time, all crimson against the white 

 snow. To-day he looked down upon me, and without 

 any warning suddenly began to sing his full song 

 in a whisper. " Wheepl, wheepl, wheepl, " he whistled 

 with a mellow and wood-wind note; and again, a 

 full tone lower, "Wheepl, wheepl, wheepl." Then 

 he sang a lilting double-note song, "Chu-wee, chu- 

 wee, chu-wee," ending with a ringing whistle, 

 "Whit, whit, whit, teu, teu, teu," and then ran them 

 together, "Whit-teu, whit-teu, whit-teu." As his 

 lovely dove-colored mate flitted jealously through the 



