190 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



*' stillicidious " note, my friend called it — 

 was heard again. No ; it was not from the 

 sky, as we had thought at first, but from a 

 thicket of alders just behind us. Then we 

 recognized it, and laughed at ourselves. It 

 was the staccato whistle of an olive-backed 

 thrush, a sweet familiarity, over which I 

 should have supposed it impossible for either 

 of us to be puzzled. 



The star of the flock, as some readers will 

 not need to be told, having marked the un- 

 expected name in the foregoing list, was the 

 Philadelphia vireo. What a bright minute 

 it is in a man's vacation when such a stranger 

 suddenly hops upon a branch before his eyes ! 

 He feels almost like quoting Keats. " Then 

 felt I," he might say, not with full serious- 

 ness, perhaps, — 



" Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 

 When a new planet swims into his ken." 



Yet how unconcerned the bird seems ! To 

 him it is all one. He knows nothing of 

 his spectator's emotions. Rarity ? What is 

 that ? He has been among birds of his own 

 kind ever since he came out of the egg. 

 Sedately he moves from twig to twig, think- 



