THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS 3 
March morning, but is uncertain of its source or 
direction; it falls like a drop of rain when no 
cloud is visible; one looks and listens, but to no 
purpose. The weather changes, perhaps a cold 
snap with snow comes on, and it may be a week 
before I hear the note again, and this time or the 
next perchance see the bird sitting on a stake in 
the fence lifting his wing as he calls cheerily to his 
mate. Its notes now become daily more frequent; 
the birds multiply, and, flitting from point to point, 
call and warble more confidently and gleefully. 
Their boldness increases till one sees them hovering 
with a saucy, inquiring air about barns and out- 
buildings, peeping into dove-cotes and stable win- 
dows, inspecting knotholes and pump-trees, intent 
only on a place to nest. They wage war against 
robins and wrens, pick quarrels with swallows, and 
seem to deliberate for days over the policy of tak- 
ing forcible possession of one of the mud-houses of 
the latter. But as the season advances they drift 
more into the background. Schemes of conquest 
which they at first seemed bent upon are aban- 
doned, and they settle down very quietly in their 
old quarters in remote stumpy fields. 
Not long after the bluebird comes the robin, 
sometimes in March, but in most of the Northern 
States April is the month of the robin. In large 
numbers they scour the fields and groves. You 
hear their piping in the meadow, in the pasture, on 
the hillside. Walk in the woods, and the dry 
leaves rustle with the whir of their wings, the air 
