EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 11 
No thrush song, however, will ever equal that first 
one which I heard among the birch trees. Creeping 
softly along the path that evening, I finally saw the 
little singer on a branch against the darkening sky. 
Again and again he sang, until at last I noticed that, 
when the highest notes were reached and the song 
ceased to my ears, the singer sang on still. Quiver- 
ing in an ecstasy, with open beak and half-fluttering 
wings, the thrush sang a strain that went beyond my 
range. Like the love-song of the bat, perhaps the 
best part of the song of the hermit thrush can never 
be heard by any human ear. 
It was the morning of June twentieth. I stood at 
the gate of the farm-house where three roads met, 
and the air was full of bird-songs. For a long time I 
stood there, and tried to note how many different 
songs I could hear. Nearby were the alto joy-notes 
of the Baltimore oriole. Up from the meadow where 
the trout brook flowed, came the bubbling, gurgling 
notes of the bobolink. Robins, wood thrushes, song 
sparrows, chipping sparrows, blue-birds, vireos, gold- 
finches, chebecs, indigo birds, flickers, phoebes, scar- 
let tanagers, red-winged blackbirds, catbirds, house 
wrens — altogether, without moving from my place, 
I counted twenty-three different bird-songs and 
bird-notes. 
Nearby I saw a robin’s nest, curiously enough built 
directly on the ground on the side of the bank of one 
of the roads, and lined with white wool, evidently 
picked up in the neighboring sheep-pasture. This 
