288 Birds of the Heaven [FIRST WEEK 



then sending down a shrill cry. It is a beautiful sight, 

 not very often to be seen near a city unless watched for. 



To a dweller in a city or its suburbs I heartily com- 

 mend at this season the forming of this habit, to look 

 upward as often as possible on your walks. An instant 

 suffices to sweep the whole heavens with your eye, and if 

 the distant circling forms, moving in so stately a manner, 

 yet so swiftly, and in their every movement personifying 

 the essence of wild and glorious freedom, if this sight 

 does not send a thrill through the onlooker, then he may 

 at once pull his hat lower over his eyes and concern himself 

 only with his immediate business. The joys of Nature are 

 not for such as he; the love of the wild which exists in 

 every one of us is, in him, too thickly " sicklied o'er" with 

 the veneer of convention and civilisation. 



Even as late as November, when the water begins to 

 freeze in the tiny cups of the pitcher plants, and the frost 

 brings into being a new kind of foliage on glass and stone, 

 a few insect-eaters of the summer woods still linger on. 

 A belated red-eyed vireo may be chased by a snowbird, 

 and when we approach a flock of birds, mistaking them at 

 a distance for purple finches, we may discover they are 

 myrtle warblers, clad in the faded yellow of their winter 

 plumage. In favoured localities these brave little birds 

 may even spend the entire winter with us. 



One of the best of November's surprises may come 

 when all hope of late migrants has been given up. Walking 

 near the river, our glance falls on what might be a painter's 

 palate with blended colours of all shades resting on the 

 smooth surface of the water. We look again and again, 



