68 IN BIRD LAND. 



" roughing it " ? Strange to say, I saw no more fox- 

 sparrows until the twenty-eighth, when the weather 

 had grown warm. That was also the day on which 

 I saw the first winter wren scudding about in the 

 brush-heaps and wood-piles and perking up his tail 

 in the most approved bantam fashion. It may be 

 a poor joke, but the thought came of its own accord, 

 that if brevity is the soul of wit, this little wren 

 must have a very witty tail ; and it really is an 

 amusing appendage, held up at an acute angle with 

 the bird's sloping back. 



As I strolled along the edge of the woods on the 

 same day, the fine rhythmic trill of the bush-spar- 

 row reached my ear. He was celebrating his return 

 to this sylvan resort, and his voice was in excellent 

 trim ; the fact is, I never heard him acquit himself 

 quite so well, not even in May. Miss Lucy Larcom, 

 of tender and sacred memory, has happily charac- 

 terized this triller's song in melodious verse : — 



" One syllable, clear and soft 

 As a raindrop's silvery patter, 

 Or a tinkling fairy-bell, heard aloft, 

 In the midst of the merry chatter 

 Of robin and linnet and wren and jay, — 

 One syllable oft repeated ; 

 He has but a word to say. 

 And of that he will not be cheated." 



But why was not the grass-finch, his relative of 

 the fields, in just as good voice when he arrived on 

 the thirty-first? The last two springs this bird had 

 to be on his singing-grounds several days before he 



