FAR AND NEAR 



a look of defiance in his eye. But we soon reassured 

 him, and presently left him perched upon a branch 

 in a much more composed state of mind. The parent 

 hawks did not appear upon the scene during our stay. 



II 



I do not share the alarm expressed in some quar- 

 ters over the seeming decrease in the numbers of our 

 birds. We are always more or less pessimistic in 

 regard to the present time and present things. As we 

 grow older, the number of beautiful things in the 

 world seems to diminish. The Indian summer is not 

 what it used to be; the winters are not so bracing; 

 the spring is more uncertain; and honest men are 

 fewer. But there is not much change, after all. The 

 change is mainly in us. I find no decrease in the great 

 body of our common field, orchard, and wood birds, 

 though I do not see the cliff swallows I used to see in 

 my youth; they go farther north, to northern New 

 England and Canada. Our smart new farm build- 

 ings with their dressed and painted clapboards do not 

 attract them. At RangeleyLake, inMaine, I saw the 

 eaves of bams as crowded with their mud nests as I 

 used to see the eaves of my father's barns amid the 

 Catskills. In the cliffs along the Yukon in Alaska 

 they are said to swarm in great numbers. The cliffs 

 along the upper Columbia show thousands of their 

 nests. Nearly all our game-birds are decreasing in 

 numbers, because sportsmen are more and more 

 160 



