234 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



looked, a speck showed against the blue, which 

 grew larger and larger, and into sight volplaned a 

 Wilson snipe, the driven air whining and beating 

 against its wings in little waves of music, and we had 

 added to our collection of bird-music the famous 

 wing-song of the Wilson snipe, even rarer than the 

 strange flight-song of the woodcock. 



A little later one of my friends found our first 

 olive-backed thrush's nest, lined with porcupine- 

 hair and black rootlets, and containing blue eggs 

 blotched with brown. Just beyond the nest I heard 

 what I thought was a gold-finch singing "Per- 

 chickery, per-chickery. " The song was so loud that 

 I stopped to investigate, and to my delight found 

 that the singer was a pine grosbeak, all rose-red 

 against a dark green spruce. All around us magnifi- 

 cent olive-sided flycatchers shouted from their tree- 

 tops, "Hip! three cheers! Hip! three cheers!" and 

 we heard the listless song of the beautiful Cape May 

 warbler, with its yellow and black under-parts and 

 orange-brown eye-patch and black crown. "Zee, 

 zee, zee, zip," it sang, something like the song of 

 the blackpoll warbler, but lacking the high, glassy, 

 crystalline notes of that white-cheeked bird. 



I was responsible for the last bird-song which ap- 

 pears on the lists of my three friends — but not on 

 mine. We were to start back for civilization the next 

 morning, and I was walking along the river-bank in 

 the late twilight, while my more industrious and 

 scientific companions were writing up their notes 

 and compiling lists of everything seen and heard on 



