SONG BIRDS OF ORCHARD AND WOODLAND. 189 



bats were flying (for my days were spent at school, and 

 there was no time but morning and evening in which to 

 really live), I heard a burst of melody far above the tree 

 tops, and saw the little singer rising against the glow in the 

 western sky, simulating the Skylark, and pouring forth its 





Fig. 62. — Oven-bird and nest. 



melody, not to the orb of day but to the slowly rising moon ; 

 then, when the melody came nearer, as the exhausted* singer 

 fell from out the sky and shot swiftly downward, alighting 

 at my very feet, I saw in the dim light that the author of 

 this soaring vesper song was my little common, every-day 

 friend, the Oven-bird. Night after night I listened to its 

 •flight song above the wooded hills of Worcester, where it 

 is one of the usual sounds of evening. Years afterward, 

 John Burroughs, the dean of nature writers, described its 

 evensong, and people seemed to marvel as if it were a new 



