114 ''^ BIRD LAND. 



One of my surprises was a warbler's trill on the 

 twelfth of August. The little tantahzer kept itself 

 so far up in the trees as to baffle all attempts at 

 identification, but I am disposed to think it was a 

 cerulean warbler. On the nineteenth of August two 

 warbler trills, one of them, I feel almost sure, from 

 the throat of the chestnut-sided warbler, were heard, 

 which is all the more novel because these birds are 

 not residents, but only migrants in this latitude. I 

 should have felt amply repaid for all my efforts, had 

 I proved nothing more than that warblers will some- 

 times regale one with an aftermath of song in the 

 dog days. 



The most persistent minstrel of the midsummer 

 orchestra was the wood-pewee, — the only bird 

 whose song I heard on every excursion to the woods 

 during July and August ; and even when September 

 came, there seemed to be little abatement in his 

 musical industry. All the year round, the song- 

 sparrow is the most prolific lyrist of my acquain- 

 tance, but in midsummer he is distanced by his 

 sylvan neighbor, the wood-pewee. During my walks 

 on the twenty-ninth and thirty-first of August 

 the pewee's was the only song heard. 



Then, he does not confine himself wholly to 

 his ordinary song, Phe-e-w-e-e or Phe-e-e-o-r-e-e-e, 

 for one day in July he twittered a quaint med- 

 ley in a low, caressing tone, as if singing a lullaby 

 to his nestlings. At first I could not tell what 

 bird was the author of the new style of melody, but 

 presently the song glided sweetly into the well-known 



