88 THE CITY OF THE BIRDS. 



move off again the mother is reheved and sets 

 about at once trimming her feathers, which no 

 doubt have been much neglected during the long 

 confinement. After a little combing and brush- 

 ing she seems to search for tender spanners 

 among the leaves for the hungry little throats. 



With the exception of the brown thrasher, the 

 song and Wilson's thrush — whose vespers and 

 matins I often attend as I would a band concert 

 or a sweet human singer — the purple finch is the 

 most tuneful of our sylvan minstrels. There is 

 such a rich, clear intonation to his voice, such an 

 unmistakable expression of joy and delight in his 

 prolonged warble, that it is sure to hold the list- 

 ener spellbound, whenever he happens within the 

 charmed precincts. 



Moving away from a thrasher's nest, through 

 the cedars and oaks, interspersed here and there 

 with thrifty pines, whose thousands of light-yellow 

 sterile catkins are now shining out from the deep 

 green bushes of the needle leaves, all exhaling the 

 fragrance of pinus and scattering innumerable 

 pollen grains, that appear, when shaken by the 

 breezes, like clouds of resin smoke, curling out 

 from the branches, I come full upon the purple 

 songster. Through the rifts in the spray I see 

 him perched sideways, one foot above the other, 

 seventy feet from the ground, on the topmost 

 young shoot of a pine. His position seems to be 



