2o6 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



and descend upon the vireo's hanging nest and 

 eat the eggs from it, I always think, with more 

 gusto than in their other freebooting, and small 

 blame to them. The red-eyed vireo leads an ex- 

 emplary life, no doubt, living properly on small 

 insects and keeping up perpetual prayer-meeting, 

 but his self-righteous twaddle must be intensely 

 irritating to all but impeccably good birds that 

 have to listen to it. In gladsome relief from this 

 was the demeanor of the Canadian warblers, also 

 flitting daintily in the treetops. I know the 

 authorities say that the Canadian warbler fre- 

 quents low thickets, but there is no mistaking the 

 bird with his breast and throat of clear yellow and 

 his necklace of jet beads, and this May the leafy 

 topmost twigs of the deciduous trees in the 

 Chocorua region held many such. They sang 

 their liquid warble which has in it more than a 

 suggestion of the song-sparrow notes of the water- 

 thrush song, and they dashed out into the free air 

 for insects which they captured, flycatcher fashion, 

 and then dashed back again. The Canadian 

 warblers are migrating, feeding and singing as 

 they go on to their nesting sites farther north, and 



