A BUNCH OF BRIGHT BIRDS 293 



smaller and more ordinary sense of the word ; as 

 unlike as possible, certainly, to the classic sweet- 

 ness of the canyon wren's tune ; but to me even 

 more exciting and memorable. On a sultry, in- 

 dolent afternoon (April 9) I had betaken myself 

 to Cemetery Hill for a lazy stroll, and had barely 

 alighted from the electric car, when I heard 

 strange noises somewhere near at hand. In my 

 confusion I thought for an instant of the scissor- 

 tailed flycatchers, with whose various outlandish 

 outcries and antics I had been for several days 

 amixsing myself. Then I discovered that the 

 sound came from above, and looking up, saw 

 straight over my head, between the hilltop and 

 the clouds, a wedge-shaped flock of large birds. 

 Long slender necks and bills, feet drawn up and 

 projecting out behind the tails, wing-action mod- 

 erate (after the manner of geese rather than 

 ducks), color dark, — so much, and no more, the 

 glass showed me, while the birds, sixty or more 

 in number, as I guessed, were fast receding north- 

 ward. They should be cranes, I said to myself, 

 since they were surely not herons, and then, like 

 a flash, it came over me that I knew the voice. 

 By good luck I had lived the winter before where 

 I heard continually the lusty shouts of a captive 

 sandhill crane ; and it was to a chorus of sand- 

 hill cranes that I was now listening. 



