FIELD AND STUDY 



terday, out of the kitchen window, I saw three 

 speckled Canada warblers on the ground in the 

 garden. How choice and rare they looked on the 

 dull surface ! In my neighbor's garden or dooryard 

 I should probably have seen more of them, and 

 in his trees and shrubbery as many magnolia and 

 bay-breasted and black-throated blue warblers as 

 in my own; and about his neighbor's place, and 

 his, and his, throughout the township, and on west 

 throughout the county, and throughout the State, 

 and the adjoining State, on west to the Missis- 

 sippi and beyond, I should have found in every 

 bushy tangle and roadside and orchard and grove 

 and wood and brookside, the same advancing line 

 of migrating birds — warblers, flycatchers, finches, 

 thrushes, sparrows, and so on — that I found here. 

 I should have found high-holes calling and drum- 

 ming, robins and phoebes nesting, swallows skim- 

 ming, orioles piping, oven-birds demurely tripping 

 over the leaves in the woods, tanagers and gros- 

 beaks in the ploughed fields, purple finches in the 

 cherry-trees, and white-throats and white-crowned 

 sparrows in the hedges. 



One sees the passing bird procession in his own 

 grounds and neighborhood without pausing to think 

 that in every man's grounds and in every neigh- 

 borhood throughout the State, and throughout a 

 long, broad belt of States, about several millions 

 of homes, and over several millions of farms, the 



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