Birds from a Suburban Window 



while to do anything to "improve" my 

 swamp. There it lies, in all its unkempt 

 wildness, drawing the birds from near and 

 far, for my own and my neighbors' delight. 

 There has even been some talk among us, 

 dwellers upon its borders, of buying out 

 for a song (as we might) the equities and 

 mortgages and other legal encumbrances 

 upon those swamp lots, and dedicating our 

 birds' paradise to nature in perpetuum. I 

 certainly hope we may some time feel rich 

 enough to do it. 



From my suburban window I have 

 watched the comings and goings of the 

 birds now for four years. And there is 

 not a month in the year when I have not 

 been richly rewarded for the hours and 

 moments thus spent. Even in the dead of 

 winter the sheltered swamp has scarcely 

 for a single day been untenanted. 



I recall, particularly, one very cold Sun- 

 day in January, when there was a regular 

 flight of half-frozen and half-starved birds 

 into this cover. Early in the morning, be- 

 fore it was fairly light, I heard the feeble 

 and disconsolate cawing of half a dozen 

 crows, from the southeast corner of the 



