SONG BIRDS OF ORCHARD AND WOODLAND. 189 
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bats were flying (for my days were spent at school, and 
there was no time but morning and evening in which to 
really live), I heard a burst of melody far above the tree 
tops, and saw the little singer rising against the glow in the 
western sky, simulating the Skylark, and pouring forth its 
Fig. 62.—Oven-bird and nest. 
melody, not to the orb of day but to the slowly rising moon ; 
then, when the melody came nearer, as the exhausted singer 
fell from out the sky and shot swiftly downward, alighting 
at my very feet, I saw in the dim light that the author of 
this soaring vesper song was my little common, every-day 
friend, the Oven-bird. Night after night I listened to its 
flight song above the wooded hills of Worcester, where it 
is one of the usual sounds of evening. Years afterward, 
John Burroughs, the dean of nature writers, described its 
evensong, and people seemed to marvel as if it were a new 
