2 AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 



A FEBRUARY WALK IN THE WOODS. 



I've been sitting here in the watch tower for over an hour, watching 

 the daylight die out over the glistening snow fields, the far blue hills 

 and the near green pines. Masses of purple and pale lilac clouds have 

 drifted into the west, glowed warmest red and softest pink, and faded 

 slowly back to purple and lilac gray. 



I think of Elizabeth and her peonies and lilac and the spring days 

 that "seemed to melt away into a dream of pink and purple peace." 

 For this has been the third day of spring, in spite of the calendar. In 

 spite of the Calendars, I might say, for I sat this afternoon in a room 

 with no less than seven of these monitors of the flight of time, each 

 one declaring with more of less vociferousness that as the month was 

 February, it must be winter. But a calendar in an insentient, dull 

 affair of paper and ink, while I am a sentient being, and I felt the 

 Spring begin Saturday. 



For a week there had been a vague intermittent hints of a change. 

 A difference in the early morning look of the sky, something changed 

 in the mists that hung over the river at mid day, and two or three 

 times at sunset a pink flush over the maple grove on the Rolway that 

 spoke of swelling buds. On Thursday, taking a walk over the North 

 Hill, I found the crust quite strong and walked wherever my fancy 

 led; on Friday the sun shone brightly all day; and on Saturday the 

 Spring came. On that day I went for a walk over through Burwell's 

 Grove and out on the road beyond, and found the snowbanks so much 

 reduced, not so much in depth as in bearing qualities, that it behooved 

 me to walk the straight and narrow way. Several times I proved the 

 inadvisability of trying any adventurous journeys cross lots 

 and finally gave up, going out of the road only where some particularly 

 promising branch grew quite uncompromisingly to the right or left. 



I wanted a bundle of whips, pussy willows and dogwood preferably, 

 but anything that looked growable finally, so I wandered along look- 

 ing for twigs with swelling buds and listening for birds. 



Once, faint and far off among the hemlocks, I heard a "Chick-a-dee- 

 dee," and twice, from among the beeches where the snow forbade my 

 going, a nuthatch called "Yank-yank-yank," and these were the only 

 sounds I heard until I was well up the hill, when a faint tapping made 

 me look into an oak tree just a few yards away and there was a Downy 

 Woodpecker just beginning to hunt for his supper. 



^^ r The faint tap had been merely preliminary, for 



!frfr*2|gp' as I watched, he grew more and more energetic 



in his assaults until at nearly every stroke, bits of 



