72 The Coming of the Birds 



I have been met by the man who was at least 

 one day ahead of me ; so firstlings are not 

 favorites. 



There is every year the one memorable 

 morning when we can say, in broad terms, 

 " The birds are here." When the oriole 

 whistles from the tallest tree in the lawn ; 

 when the wren chatters from the portal of 

 his old-time home ; when the indigo-finch 

 sings in the weedy pasture ; when lisping 

 warblers throng every tree and shrub ; while 

 over all, high in air, the twittering swallows 

 dart in ecstasy ; and at last, the day-long con- 

 cert over, whippoorwills in the woods pipe 

 their monotonous refrain. The Indians were 

 right : when there came such days as this, 

 they had no further fear of frost, and we need 

 have but little. Our climate certainly has 

 changed slightly since their time, but we have 

 in such a bird-full day an assurance that the 

 clinging finger-tips of Winter have at last re- 

 laxed and his hold upon our fields and forests 

 is lost. 



A word again of the advance guard. The 

 brown thrush came on the seventeenth of the 

 month (April, 1892), when there were no 

 leafy thickets and the maples only were in 



