BIRD PARADISE 69 



how cleanly they hold the truth. There is no 

 heresy among the bobolinks. 



I notice that the song of the thrushes is shading 

 off quite perceptibly. Like the other song birds 

 they have had their carnival of music and are 

 now passing to the monotonous chirp which will 

 mark their demeanor for the next ten months. 

 How do they ever pick up the song again I 

 Surely the skill with which they do it is one of the 

 wonderful things in mother nature's great house. 

 My thrush parishioners journey far away to their 

 Southern home. They dwell there for months, 

 but never once trill their wonderful song. Jour- 

 neying northward in the spring and lo, the old 

 song appears — not a note missing, not a strain 

 lost. Young and old alike come to the house- 

 keeping of a brief two months simply bubbling 

 over with song. Why it is so I cannot tell — the 

 fact is patent, but its best telling abounds in mys- 

 tery. There is no other place that the thrush 

 gives me quite so much as he does in the glades 

 of Bird Paradise. When the song rises from the 

 lower part of the glen and comes wandering up 

 the defile I fancy it gathers something from 

 everything as it passes. By the time it reaches me 



