THE HIGH TIDE OF BIRD LIFE 103 



the ancestor of the many warblers! Did he cling 

 to and creep along the bark, as the black-and- 

 white warbler, or feed from the ground or the 

 thicket as does the worm-eating? Did he snatch 

 flies on the wing as the necklaced Canadian war- 

 bler, or glean from the brook's edge as our water 

 thrush? The struggle for existence has not been 

 absent from the lives of these light-hearted little 

 fellows, and they have had to be jack-of -all-trades 

 in their search for food. 



The gnats and other flying insects have indeed 

 to take many chances when they slip from their 

 cocoons and dance up and down in the warm sun- 

 light ! Lucky for their race that there are millions 

 instead of thousands of them; for now the swifts 

 and great numbers of tree and barn swallows 

 spend the livelong day in swooping after the 

 unfortunate gauzy-winged motes, which have 

 risen above the toad's maw upon land, and beyond 

 the reach of the trout's leap over the water. 



It would take an article as long as this simply 

 to mention hardly more than the names of the 

 birds that we may observe during a walk in May ; 

 and with bird book and glasses we must see for 

 ourselves the bobolinks in the broad meadows, 

 the cowbirds and rusty blackbirds, and, pushing 

 through the lady-slipper marshes, we may sur- 

 prise the solitary great blue and the little green 

 herons at their silent fishing. 



No matter how late the spring may be, the great 



