46 THE NIDOLOGIST 
early in the season, and there was no appreci- 
ative audience to inspire him to further effort. 
The second song season of the Mockingbird 
ordinarily ends about the middle of November. 
At the last they may be seen in the frosty 
mornings sitting solitary on the summit of some 
small tree, with their white breasts to the sun, 
giving utterance to a few notes of song. With 
the warmth of midday there is a return of spirit. 
In the second season they never attain the vigor 
of the first. At the close of the second they 
sing when the thermometer ranges among the 
forties. Later they are silent when it is tem- 
porarily above seventy degrees, the previous 
chill having stilled them. When the first sea- 
son fully begins, cold, however, does not seem 
to have the power to suppress them, the im- 
pulse, once aroused with the approach of spring, 
being irrepressible. 
The Carolina Wren, of all the songsters of the 
up country, is, as I have said, almost the only 
one that has a continuous song period, lasting 
the whole year round. At the close of the nest- 
ing season, when molting, they are least in- 
clined to be musical, but even then their hearty 
song greets the ear at all hours of the day. At 
this time of the year the young are stirred to 
music, and their peculiar warbling notes singu- 
larly contrast with the finished productions of 
the adults. 
Great Carolina Wrens were these little birds 
called when I first became acquainted with them 
years ago, and great still they are—as weather 
prophets. With senses so keen as to discern 
those subtle changes which to us are imper- 
ceptible, which find no response in our duller 
organisms, the end of those sharp, cold 
spells which come to us from the Northwest, 
and which change our land of sunshine and 
song into Northern winter, is unerringly fore- 
told; their loud, ringing song heralding the 
coming change. During an unusually inclement 
season a few years back, the superior foresight 
of these sensitive little creatures was brought 
home with renewed force. I had been out all 
day searching for Northern birds, which I hoped 
would be driven southward by the severity of 
the weather, and was returning home on horse- 
back with a companion, chilled and _ tired. 
There was nothing inviting inthe scene. It was 
near nightfall, after a gray, cheerless afternoon. 
It had not been one of those days every field 
Ornithologist loves to recall, when so many in- 
cidents occurred that the hours passed un- 
heeded and mght came on before you were 
aware, when the old enthusiasm returned—that 
first enthusiasm, that knew neither hunger nor 
fatigue, that, unbreakfasted and undinnered, 
brought you home in the gathering twilight with 
quickened step, and which afterward carried 
you without sense of weariness into the small 
hours as you finished specimen after specimen, 
or recorded on the pages of your journal the 
experiences of the eventful day. My compan- 
ion had just complained of the cold and had 
predicted a very hard night, and urged that we 
hasten our horses’ steps homeward, as we had 
some distance to go. A moment later, almost 
at our feet, from a brush pile on the wood’s 
edge, came the song of a Carolina Wren. So 
inspiring was it that my friend instantly cried 
out, “Hear the Spring Bird! It is going to be 
warmer!’ Spring Birds are these Wrens locally 
called. For once, a proverb is broken, for this 
prophet is not without honor in his own coun- 
try.* Before the remaining two miles of our 
ride were accomplished, the change in the 
weather had become marked, and by the follow- 
ing night the last vestige of snow had disap- 
peared. 
A year later, with a botanical friend, I made 
my first ascent of Mount Pinnacle—the highest 
ground in South Carolina. We started early in 
the morning at the foot. A dense fog shrouded 
the mountain, and the bushes and trees were 
dripping. A thousand feet took us above the 
vapor. A glorious sight now presented itself to 
our eyes. There below us lay a sea of silver, 
and above a vault of blue. We had bathed our 
faces in the clouds and passed above into sun- 
shine. Before the second thousand feet were 
overcome the distant mutter,of thunder admon- 
ished us of an approaching storm. A thunder- 
storm without shelter on an uninhabited moun- 
tain had not fallen to the lot of either. The 
vivid lightning and the sharp peals of thunder, 
reverberating through those everlasting hills 
until it seemed as if all the forces of nature 
were let loose, will never be forgotten by either 
of us. When we reached the summit the war- 
ring elements were at our feet, for the storm had 
passed below. Here in this remote spot, as the 
sun came from beneath the cloud, were we 
greeted with hearty welcome by a familiar ac- 
quaintance. It was the Carolina Wren—still 
the Spring Bird—the bird of sunshine. In that 
one moment the toil of the mountain was for- 
gotten. 
a a 
Of Educational Value. 
Tue NIDOLOGIST is a magazine devoted, as its name 
indicates, to the study of the nesting habits of differ- 
ent species of birds. Its contents are the results of 
actual observation by scientists of reputation, and in 
some cases, of eminence. It is good supplementary 
reading for grammar schools.—Pudblic School Fournal. 
* In some sections, I have been informed, this Wren 
is called Spring Bird because it frequents the dense 
vegetation about springs. 
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