236 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
and strangely enough, was at its best at a distance 
and in the dusk or the early moonlight. I was to 
learn later that the singer was the veery or Wilson 
thrush. That was many years ago, but I have loved 
the bird from that day. Once I found its nest set in 
the midst of a dark rhododendron swamp; and as the 
mother bird slipped like a tawny shadow from the 
wondrous blue eggs gleaming in the dusk, from 
nearby vibrated the whirling ringing notes of its 
mate. Again, on a tussock in Wolf Island Marsh I 
found another; and as both birds fluttered around 
me with the alarm note, “‘Pheu, pheu,”’ the father 
bird whispered a strain of his song, and it was as if 
the wind had rippled the music from the waving 
marsh-grasses. 
In the dawn-dusk on the top of Mount Pocono I 
have listened to them singing in the rain, and their 
song was as dreamy sweet as the tinkling of the 
spring shower. The veery song is at its best by 
moonlight. I remember one late May twilight com- 
ing down to the round green circle of an old charcoal- 
pit, by the side of a little lake set deep in the hills 
and fringed with the tender green of the opening 
leaves. That day I had climbed Kent Mountain, 
and seen my first eagle, and visited a rattlesnake den, 
and found a dozen or so nests, and walked many 
dusty miles. It was nearly dark as I slipped off my 
clothes and swam through the motionless water. 
The still air was sweet with little elusive waves of 
perfume from the blossoms of the wild grape. Over 
the edge of Pond Hill the golden rim of a full moon 
