THE INSPIRING SPARROWS. 19 



of a last summer's weed bent to the passing breeze. 

 Silence everywhere, save when dispelled by the fitful 

 chirping and twittering of the birds. It proved to 

 be a model winter day, but because of this do not 

 think I had but to walk up to any one or all of these 

 sparrows and bid them "good-morning." They are 

 never disposed to hold direct communication. Your 

 experience is likely to be, at best, but a long cata- 

 logue of glimpses, and it depends upon yourself 

 how much of the bird's doings you have gathered 

 in the fraction of a minute. Your patience is sorely 

 tried ; but if you have pluck, the scattered observations 

 can be collected in your hours of reflection, and at 

 last you will be able to assert with confidence whether 

 it was a song-sparrow or a tree-sparrow that seemed 

 to walk on three legs through the air, so limb-like was 

 the motion of the tail. When you can command 

 the use of both eyes and ears the initial problem 

 of identification becomes much easier. Not that 

 every utterance can be recognized, beyond the bald 

 fact that it is a bird-note. Widely differing species 

 chirp and chatter in essentially the same way, and 

 sometimes the unthinking rambler may be looking 

 for a bird when a little tree-toad is sounding the 

 clear call that lures him on. 



This host of sparrows this morning were full of 

 life, and what were they doing? It is a natural 

 question, for usually you do not find birds idle ; but, 

 like many another inquiry, more easily asked than 

 answered. They were pre-eminently restless. At 

 first I thought it was but a loose flock that came 



