THE SPRING BIRD PROCESSION 



same flood-tide of bird-life is creeping and eddying 

 or sweeping over the land. When the mating or 

 nesting high-holes are awakening you in the early 

 morning by their insistent calling and drumming on 

 your metal roof or gutters or ridge-boards, they are 

 doing the same to your neighbors near by, and to 

 your fellow countrymen fifty, a hundred, a thou- 

 sand miles away. Think of the myriads of door- 

 yards where the "chippies" are just arriving; of 

 the blooming orchards where the passing many- 

 colored warblers are eagerly inspecting the buds 

 and leaves ; of the woods and woody streams where 

 the oven-birds and water-thrushes are searching out 

 their old haunts; of the secluded bushy fields and 

 tangles where the chewinks, the brown thrashers, 

 the chats, the catbirds, are once more preparing 

 to begin life anew — think of all this and more, and 

 you may get some idea of the extent and importance 

 of our bird-life. 



I fancy that on almost any day in mid-May the 

 flickers are drilling their holes into a million or more 

 decayed trees between the Hudson and the Mis- 

 sissippi; that any day a month earlier the phoebes 

 are starting their nests under a million or more 

 woodsheds or bridges or overhanging rocks; that 

 several millions of robins are carrying mud and 

 straws to sheltered projections about buildings, or 

 to the big forked branches in the orchards. 



When in my walk one day in April, through an 



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