UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
trunks of the trees, in which they make their 
homes. 
Little currents of wild life hourly flow about me. 
Yesterday, amid the slow rain and mist and general 
obscurity, there was suddenly an influx of birds in 
all the old apple-trees about me. Robins appeared by 
twos and threes in some choke-cherry bushes a few 
yards below me, and with much cackling and flutter- 
ing helped themselves to the fruit. A hermit thrush 
perched on a dry limb in front of my tent and in 
many different postures surveyed me in my canvas 
cavern, uttering a low note which I took to be his 
comments upon me. You may always know the 
hermit thrush from the other thrushes by that 
peculiar, soft, breathing motion of its tail. A male 
redstart came and flitted and flashed about the 
apple-branches without heeding me at all. Whitman 
asks:— 
“Do you take it I would astonish? 
Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart 
twittering through the woods? 
Do I astonish more than they? ” 
The redstart, with his black-and-orange suit, and 
his quick, lively motions, does not astonish, but few 
birds give the eye more pleasure. How gay and 
festive he looks, darting and flashing amid the 
gnarled and scaly branches of the decaying apple- 
trees! It seems as if all his motions were designed 
to show off his plumage to the best advantage. 
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