The Audubon Societies 43 
houses are out of keeping with the spirit of Birdland and its hard-and-fast law 
of color protection. 
There are many good patterns for bird-houses, but none are better than those 
figured in Mr. E. H. Forbush’s ‘Useful Birds and Their Protection,’ and copied 
in ‘Gray Lady and the Birds.’ Stick to natural bark, gray wood, and adapta- 
tion of tree forms, being careful never to make draughty houses by putting doors 
opposite to each other. In one way birds outsense many human beings; things of 
air and light as they are, they refuse to sleep or rear their young in a draught! 
On the other hand, see to it that your houses are not set so that they will either 
face the northeast or lie in the eye of the sun during the hottest part of the day. 
—M. O. W. 
HONK! HONK! 
Oh, the high, sweet sound, 
When the snow is barely vanished underground; 
Ere the first green thing 
In the woods has answered to the kiss of Spring! 
Oh, that call afar, 
Coming strangely into heaven (as eve’s first star)! 
Not to listening ears 
Comes that call: From nowhere suddenly it nears, 
Through the vast sky-room 
Drives before it every shred of winter gloom. 
Oh, the high sweet sound 
From the brave wild flock, ever northward bound! 
Now, I pray no scath 
From the fowler shall o’ertake them on their path, 
While their moving wedge 
Dwindling, sinks beneath the dim horizon’s edge. 
Fain I’d see, at last, 
Where they rest, and nest, their long journey past; 
In what sedgy spot, 
Loved of sunshine (happily by man forgot). 
Oh, the high, sweet sound 
From the glad, wild rovers, when that spot they’ve found! 
—Edith M. Thomas. 
