64 



ON THE BIRDS' HIGHWAY 



While we are speaking of March song- 

 sters let us mention one more bird that 

 comes to us in that windy month — the 

 phoebe. His famiUar " O-willy, o-will " 

 has rung through too many orchards and 



mingled too often 

 with the rippling 

 river to have es- 

 caped many ears 

 — but compara- 

 tively few persons 

 have seen him 

 later in the sea- 

 son fly into the 

 air and, while with 

 rapid wing-beats he climbs the sky, utter 

 his whole vocabulary of notes with praise- 

 worthy gusto. It seems necessary for 

 some birds to spring into the air and 

 force out their music with all the energy 

 in their little bodies, to express the joy 

 that fills their overflowing souls. 



Often entirely unnoticed and rarely ob- 

 served, the brown creeper follows his 

 monotonous spirals about tree trunk after 

 tree trunk the day long, and perhaps this 

 is the reason that so few of us have heard 

 his exquisite song. Late in the spring, 



