A May Morning 



BY FRED. H. KENNARD 



rHERE is a bird pasture, as I call it, about a half hour's 

 ride from Boston, and thither I went on May 30, 1898, 

 ^ ""'"'' to see if I could find the nest of a White-eyed Vireo 



that I had often hunted for in years gone by, but 

 never yet succeeded in finding. 



This bird pasture, on one side of which runs the 

 road, consists of eight or ten acres of old, wet pas- 

 ture land on a hillside surrounded on two other 

 sides by fields and an orchard, and immediately 

 above a marsh in which the sedges and grasses grow 

 luxuriantly, and which is bordered by alders, birches and other 

 swamp-loving trees. The pasture itself is very wet in one portion, 

 and has been overgrown with birch, alders, oak and tangles of grape- 

 vines, wait-a-bits, poison ivy, etc. In another part it is more open, 

 and is more sparsely covered with red cedars and white pines, while 

 the ground is dotted with wild roses and hard-hack, interspersed with 

 clumps of alders. This combination of hill and marsh, field and 

 orchard, cover and open, as well as evergreen and deciduous growth, 

 makes it an ideal place for birds and their breeding ; and one that 

 is hard to duplicate in any locality, combining also woods and civili- 

 zation as it does, for there are houses and barns in the immediate 

 vicinity. You probably cannot duplicate this pasture, but those of 

 you who love birds, and who can find any spot approximating this 

 in conditions, would do well to appropriate it, metaphorically speak- 

 ing, as I have this. 



But to return to the birds — I thought I would carefully note all 

 those I saw or heard in the course of a short hour I had to spare, 

 and with the following results : As I took down the bars in order 

 to take my bicycle into the pasture, a Baltimore Oriole was singing 

 on top of an elm close by, and I have no doubt that its mate was 

 sitting on the nest that hung pendent from the next tree. A Catbird 

 slunk off into the bushes to the right of me. from a thicket in which 

 she last year raised a brood ; and. while chaining my wheel, I heard 

 the glorious notes of a Brown Thrasher singing, a little way off, on 

 the top of a tall white oak. Several Red-eyed Vireos were there 

 too, their steady, rippling song forming a soft accompaniment to the 

 more conspicuous notes of the other feathered songsters. Next, I 

 flushed a Quail, and, while watching its flight, I almost stepped on 

 two more, which got up from the underbrush at my feet. 



I started in now on my hunt for the White-eye's nest, and for 



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