98 RAMBLES ABOUT HOME. 



night for the first birds of the season; let him wan- 

 der all day in or about tangled thickets and sheltered, 

 sunny hill-sides ; let him, with sleepless eye, scrutinize 

 every haunt of the birds, and with vigilant ear listen to 

 every faint chirp and far-off twitter, and follow up every 

 undetermined bird-note ; let him do this, year after year, 

 from April 1st to the 30th, and he will find his note- 

 books teeming with records of early birds, that will come 

 and go all unsuspected by the mid-day observer, who 

 often will insist upon the absence altogether of many 

 a summer songster, which, skulking about, withholds its 

 joyous songs until the woods have welcomed the full 

 company of its kind, that of old have made merry in its 

 shady nooks. The fact is, there is more to be learned 

 about birds in one hour of the early morning than in 

 six weeks of midday sunshine. 



The amount of variation in the dates of arrival of all 

 of our spring birds is really considerable, and in the 

 whole list of migratory inland birds that annually visit 

 New Jersey, either to remain throughout the summer 

 or on their way to more northern localities, there is not 

 one that can be considered regular in the time of reach- 

 ing here, by from twenty to thirty days. 



The amount of variation in the dates of arrival, year 

 after year, of the same species say of the brown thrush, 

 cat-bird, or yellow-breasted chat is less, however, than in 

 the time of arrival of allied species, as, for instance, of the 

 various species of thrushes which reach us very irregu- 

 larly. The robin is a resident species ; the wood-thrush 

 appears from April 15th to May 10th ; the tawny thrush 

 sometimes later by two weeks, and sometimes absent al-- 

 together; the olive-backed thrush passes by irregularly 

 as to both time and seasons, and so, too, does the hermit- 

 thrush, which, however, occasionally remains throughout 



