birds — this is their genial South. It is pleasant to 

 refledt that the falling mercury, which deprives us 

 of the last of the summer residents, will at the 

 same time bring us some dweller in the far North 

 which perhaps otherwise we should not see. 



The advancing season makes itself known 

 through the songsters; they have keener percep- 

 tions and receive other intimations than come to 

 us. Day by day, as by appointment, they reappear 

 from Florida, from the Amazon and the Orinoco, 

 and make themselves at home again in northern 

 pastures. I have come to look for the tree-swal- 

 lows as regularly on the ist of April, as for the 

 oriole on the i oth of May, as if these were calen- 

 dar events of real importance. Between the middle 

 of April and the 20th of May lie the incompara- 

 ble days of the migrating warblers — days of dis- 

 covery and adventure, when the torpor of indiffer- 

 ence slips away, and, like a subtle fire in the blood, 

 is felt that enthusiasm the years do not diminish. 

 When, at night, the small birds pass overhead, their 

 faint silvery " tseeps " come out of the silence with a 

 weird suggestion of voices from the unseen world. 



Now, the days are full of pleasing suggestions 

 because of little birds shyly flitting with plant- 



25 



