SMALL COUNTRY NEIGHBORS 405 



very intelligent, interest in natural history, and solemnly 

 recorded whatever I thought to be notable. When I was 

 nine years old we were passing the summer near Tarry- 

 town, on the Hudson. My diary for September 4, 1868, 

 runs as follows : " Cold and rainy. I was called in from 

 breakfast to a room. When I went in there what was 

 my surprise to see on walls, curtains and floor about forty 

 swallows. All the morning long in every room of the 

 house (even the kitchen) were swallows. They were 

 flying south. Several hundred were outside and about 

 seventy-five in the house. I caught most of them (and 

 put them out of the windows) . The others got out them- 

 selves. One flew on my pants where he stayed until I 

 took him off." 



At the White House we are apt to stroll around the 

 grounds for a few minutes after breakfast; and during the 

 migrations, especially in spring, I often take a pair of 

 field glasses so as to examine any bird as to the identity 

 of which I am doubtful. From the end of April the 

 warblers pass in troops myrtle, magnolia, chestnut- 

 sided, bay-breasted, blackburnian, black-throated blue, 

 blue-winged, Canadian, and many others, with at the very 

 end of the season the black-poll all of them exquisite 

 little birds, but not conspicuous as a rule, except perhaps 

 the blackburnian, whose brilliant orange throat and 

 breast flame when they catch the sunlight as he flits among 

 the trees. The males in their dress of courtship are easily 

 recognized by any one who has Chapman's book on the 

 warblers. On May 4, 1906, I saw a Cape May warbler, 

 the first I had ever seen. It was in a small pine. It was 



