NATURE LEAVES 
dropped down quickly to the ground in pursuit of 
an insect, and sat a moment upon the brown surface, 
giving us a vivid sense of its bright new plumage. 
When the leaves of the trees are just unfolding, 
or, as Tennyson says, 
“When all the woods stand in a mist of green, 
And nothing perfect,” 
the tide of migrating warblers is at its height. They 
come in the night, and in the morning the trees are 
alive with them. The apple-trees are just showing 
the pink, and how closely the birds inspect them in 
their eager quest for insect food! One cold, rainy 
day at this season Wilson’s black-cap — a bird that 
is said to go north nearly to the Arctic Circle — 
explored an apple-tree in front of my window. It 
came down within two feet of my face, as I stood by 
the pane, and paused a moment in its hurry and 
peered in at me, giving me an admirable view of its 
form and markings. It was wet and hungry, and it 
had a long journey before it. What a small body to 
cover such a distance! 
The black-poll warbler, which one may see about 
the same time, is a much larger bird and of slower 
movement, and is colored much like the black and 
white creeping warbler with a black cap on its head. 
. The song of this bird is the finest in volume and most 
insectlike of that of any warbler known to me. It 
is the song of the black and white creeper reduced, 
high and swelling in the middle and low and faint 
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