SPRING ECSTASY OF THE TOWHEE. 31 



I have called him a skulker, but when comes the "harvest -time of 

 love " he mounts to the top of some towering tree and sings, ecstatically — 



" A song of joy, a song of bliss, 

 Passionate notes that clasp and kiss." 



It is a delicate tune, and all the more so that we hear it during only 

 a short season, though it is performed for hours together, almost without 

 cessation, during the time of his wooing, and is always given from a 

 tree-top — never from the ground. 



Soon the shy mate responds, and the pair sink happily into some 

 thicket to finish their courting. There, late in May, they go together 

 in search of a home. The site chosen is usually the bank of a stream, 

 or a wet place in the woods, where they have the company of water- 

 thrushes, ground-warblers, and swamp-sparrows; and the large, comfort- 

 able nest is cunningly concealed on the ground at the foot of a little brier, 

 or under a shelving rock, where we should never find it except by one of 

 those lucky accidents which the successful ornithologist learns how to 

 induce. The eggs are somewhat larger than a bluebird's, porcelain white, 

 spotted everywhere with reddish-brown, but chiefly in a wreath round the 

 large end. 



The chewinks stay with us till the middle of October, and then move 

 slowly south, the females and young going first, contrary to advance in 

 the spring, when the males are ahead. Audubon remarks that the migra- 

 tion is performed by day, from bush to bush, and that they seem to be 

 much at a loss when a large extent of forest is to be traversed. 



I have let my pen run away now and then from the straight line of 

 the rails along which I walked ; but these are some of the things I saw, 

 and the thoughts they suggested while I was waiting for that belated 

 train in the Shenandoah Valley. The hours had passed quickly to me, 

 though I heard plenty of grumbling from fellow-passengers, who knew 

 not my good friends in the thickets. When at last we embarked, 

 and rushed past the old bridge and weedy bank, it was to me alone, I 

 fancied, the full-throated wren, high on his perch, was singing a gay 

 good-speed, and the chewinks nodded their cheering " ta-tas." 



