230 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



were traveling through amethyst masses of rhodora 

 and woods white with the shad-blow. At last the 

 apple orchards were not yet in flower, and for the 

 third time that year we found ourselves among the 

 cherry blossoms. 



We never stopped until we reached a lonely bay 

 far to the north. The sun was westering well down 

 the sky when at last we crowded into a creaking 

 buckboard for a ten-mile drive. The air was full of 

 strange bird-songs. From the fields came a little 

 song that began like a feeble song sparrow and 

 ended in a buzz. It was the Savannah sparrow, 

 which I had seen every year in migration, but had 

 never before heard sing. At the first bend in the 

 road we came to a bit of marshland so full of unknown 

 bird-notes that we stopped to explore. From the 

 edge of the sphagnum bog came a loud explosive 

 song — " Chip, chip, chippy, chippy, chippy, chippy ! " 

 The singer was a greenish-colored bird, light under- 

 neath, with a white line through the eye, and looked 

 much like a red-eyed vireo except that it had a warb- 

 ler beak, the which it opened to a surprising width 

 as it sang. It was none other than the Tennessee 

 warbler, so rare a bird in my part of the world that 

 even to see one in migration was then an event. 

 Here it was one of the commonest birds of that 

 whole region. 



Then I stalked a strange vireo-song, something 

 like the monotonous notes of the red-eyed vireo, 

 but softer and with a different cadence. I finally 

 found the singer in a little thicket, and studied it 



