64 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 
road, and be deaf to your robin and wren. The song reveals it- 
self instantly, and is readily caught thereafter. 
Sitting thus with closed eyes and ears alert almost any bright 
morning in early June, a few minutes’ patience rewards me with 
the distinct identification of the following elements of song, veri- 
fied from careful notes which tally year by year—what a revela- 
tion to the pilgrim from city walls, where the scolding of the 
!garrulous sparrows in the ivy, the occasional scream of the night- 
hawk, the cooing of the pigeon, and, perhaps, an occasional pro- 
fane parrot, have summed up the ornithological inspiration !— 
robin, bobolink, wood-thrush, cat-bird, oriole, orchard oriole, mead- 
ow-lark, wren, kingbird, brown thrush, Wilson’s thrush, red-eyed 
vireo, warbling vireo, white-eyed vireo, yellow-hammer, chewink, 
rose-breasted grosbeak, purple finch, song-sparrow, yellow winged 
sparrow, chipping-sparrow, field-sparrow, bluebird, phoebe, yellow 
warbler, swallow, goldfinch, quail, nighthawk, and crow. Nor are 
these all, incredulous reader. My list is confined only to those 
songs which are more or less zzcessax¢t in my merry medley. I 
have omitted the tanager, the grackle, the indigo-bird, the red- 
start, and others, whose notes either occasionally reach my ears or 
are involved in doubt, to say nothing of the owl and whippoorwill, 
with their duet lullaby of the twilight. 
And what an endless, diversion, this picturesque, kaleidoscopic 
music, this pastoral opera, every fresh recognition bringing its 
vision of some favorite feathered songster, each with its welcome 
of personal reminiscence ! 
The fringe of wood beneath the hill sends up its faithful com- 
plement through the rippling maze of song, in which the weird 
call of the veery, the bell of the wood-thrush, and the challenge 
of the chewink form a more or less interrupted trio, occasionally 
silenced by the piercing note of the meadow-lark or the whistle 
of the quail, while again the resonant tattoo of the yellow-hammer 
rings from its hollow tree, or that coaxing, cooing note now fills 
some momentary lull: —how are the flashes of golden wing, the 
; pearly lucent eggs, the old bleached limb and all, embodied in 
that pictorial sound —* wick, wick, wick, wick, wick!” 
