4 o6 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



fearless, allowing a close approach, and as it was a male 

 in high plumage, it was unmistakable. 



In 1907, after a very hot week in early March, we 

 had an exceedingly late and cold spring. The first bird 

 I heard sing in the White House grounds was a white- 

 throated sparrow on March ist, a song sparrow speedily 

 following. The white-throats stayed with us until the 

 middle of May, overlapping the arrival of the indigo 

 buntings; but during the last week in April and first week 

 in May their singing was drowned by the music of the 

 purple finches, which I never before saw in such num- 

 bers around the White House. When we sat by the south 

 fountain, under an apple tree then blossoming, sometimes 

 three or four purple finches would be singing in the fra- 

 grant bloom overhead. In June a pair of wood thrushes 

 and a pair of black-and-white creepers made their homes 

 in the White House grounds, in addition to our ordinary 

 homemakers, the flickers, redheads, robins, catbirds, song 

 sparrows, chippies, summer yellow-birds, grackles, and, 

 I am sorry to say, crows. A handsome sapsucker spent a 

 week with us. In the same year five night herons spent 

 January and February in a swampy tract by the Poto- 

 mac, half a mile or so from the White House. 



At Mount Vernon there are of course more birds than 

 there are around the White House, for it is in the country. 

 At present but one mocking-bird sings around the house 

 itself, and in the gardens and the woods of the immedi- 

 ate neighborhood. Phoebe birds nest at the heads of the 

 columns under the front portico; and a pair or rather, 

 doubtless, a succession of pairs has nested in Washing- 



