320 FEATHERED GAME 
branches of spruce and alder where you scarce 
would think a bird could pass, or walking among 
the boughs as lightly and as blithely as any of 
the small warblers. Beneath flows the sluggish 
current along whose shady edges, in waving cat- 
tails or rankly growing grass is an abundance 
of the food they love best. 
The traveler on our summer lakes, paddling 
his noiseless way over still waters and along 
forest-margined shores, when he comes sudden- 
ly into their bends and coves may chance upon 
the family comfortably snuggling down on a 
fallen tree reaching out into the water. The 
congregation is apt to disperse without cere- 
mony—those ashore running into the woods, 
those on the log or water rising into the air with 
clatter and startled cries, shooting over the tree- 
tops like stray fragments of a rainbow,—and 
in two seconds he is alone with only a few idly 
drifting feathers in the ripples on the water to 
tell of his departed friends. Soon they will 
drop back over the encircling woods in twos 
and threes to revisit their favorite resting place. 
Perhaps if you have lived in ‘‘the back coun- 
try’’ of New England, in the months of April 
and May you have had the good fortune to see 
