A Bouquet of Song Birds 



is always aggravating, the solution of a question 

 often comes in such a manner as to be worth a 

 long interrogation. 



Throughout the woods, and especially along 

 the outer edge, slantingly perched on a limb, 

 or furtively flying from bush to bush, were 

 numerous drooping cuckoos, the black-billed 

 species, with noticeably red eyes. They are 

 not nesting yet. They wait until caterpillar 

 time, late in June. They do not believe in 

 rearing a family until they see their way clear 

 to provide for it. In a cultivated field ad- 

 joining, that less woodsy bird, the Baltimore 

 oriole, was helping herself to building material 

 out of the rags and tatters of a last year's scare- 

 crow, which had fulfilled its mission, if it ever 

 had any ; and, near by, the pewee had begun 

 the plaintive utterance of its brief elegiac, 

 which, despite its sadness, somehow falls with 

 much the same grateful effect upon the ear as 

 upon the eye fall the cooling shadows of the 

 leaves, striking athwart the massive trunk of a 

 sunlit beech. 



I was rather surprised, so late in the season, 

 to encounter fi-equently the white-breasted nut- 

 hatch, more of a winter emblem for this lati- 

 tude; not more musical, but considerably 



13 



