2 20 IN BIRD LAND. 



companions of the winter, which had come back 

 from their summer vacation in the north. How 

 glad I was to salute them and welcome them home ! 

 Their trig little forms, sprightly motions, confident 

 air of comradery, and merry trills were a joy to me. 

 And then I could not help wondering if any of them 

 might be the same birds I had met during the early 

 summer on one of the green mountains of Canada, 

 where I had spent a day of rapturous delight. In 

 the same sequestered angle, autumn though it was, 

 the phcebe bird brought back reminiscences of 

 spring, with his cheery whistle ; while farther down 

 the valley his shy relative, the wood-pewee, com- 

 plained dulcetly that winter was coming to drive 

 him from his pleasant summer haunts. Every 

 sound, whether joyful or sad, struck a responding 

 chord in my heart, because Nature had my undi- 

 vided thought. 



When the mind is distracted by sorrows it can- 

 not shake off, it boots little that the chirp of the 

 chestnut- sided and cerulean warblers is sharp and 

 penetrating ; that the call of the black-throated 

 green, black- throated blue and myrtle warblers is 

 somewhat harsh ; that the Maryland yellow-throat 

 expresses his alarm or disapproval in a note still 

 lower in the scale and quite rasping ; that the Black- 

 burnian and parula warblers tilt about far up in the 

 tree-tops, as if they scorned the ground ; that the 

 black-throats and creepers dance airily about in the 

 bushes or lower branches of the trees, come con- 

 fidingly near you, a tiny interrogation point dangling 



