FAMILY Turdldw. 



that of a turquoise blue bird! The gloom of the cypress 

 swamp is a foil for the flash of the Prothonotary who is 

 ever on the move; no Oriole or Tanager outshines him. 

 But his song does not equal his costume, Mr. Brewsfer 

 likens it to the notes of the Solitary Sandpiper with two 

 more syllables added. (See illustration, p. 234.) 



It may also be quite as difficult to think that a bird 

 should have actually sung one of the melodies recorded 

 in this volume; if so, the best way to overcome tin- 

 difficulty is to take ears as well as eyes into the fields and 

 listen not to every singer at once but to one at a time! 

 Perhaps then, after the unravelling of Nature's tangled 

 gold and silver threads of melody, one strain may br 

 heard far more beautiful than any of the musical frag- 

 ments recorded here. The little bird is Nature's expo- 

 nent of the joy of living; his song never dies with him, 

 he passes it onl But the singerl where, what so little 

 indication is there of such a thing is his end? Perhaps 

 Rev. William J. Long has answered that question better 

 than any one, in the School of the Woods. He writes as 

 follows of the touching sight of a little aged wood 

 Warbler which he found loitering beside the spring near 

 his tent in the wilderness: "For several days I had 

 noticed him there resting or flitting aboutothe under- 

 brush. . . . He was old and alone; the dark feathers 

 of his head were streaked with gray, and his feet showed 

 the wrinkled scales that age always brings to the 

 birds. . . . Today he was quieter than usual; when 

 I stretched out my hand to take him he made no resist- 

 ance, but settled down quietly on my finger and closed 

 his eyes. . . . As twilight came and all the voices 

 of the wood were hushed, I put him back on the ever- 

 green frond, where he nodded off to sleep. . . . Next 

 morning he was closer to the friendly spring. . . . 

 Again he nestled down in my hand and drank gratefully 

 the drop of water from my finger tip. At twilight I 

 found him hanging head down from a spruce root, his 

 feet clinched in a hold that would never loosen, his bill 

 just touching the life-giving water. . . . He had 

 fallen asleep there, in peace. " 



