72 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS ■ 



winged their way over it, looking back toward us. It 

 would affect our thoughts, deepen and perchance darken 

 our reflections, if such huge birds flew in numbers in 

 our sky. Have the effect of magnetic passes. They 

 are few and rare. Among the birds of celebrated 

 flight, storks, cranes, geese, and ducks. The legs hang 

 down like a weight which they [?] raise, to pump 

 up as it wese with its [sic~] wings and convey out of 

 danger. 



To see the larger and wilder birds, you must go forth 

 in the great storms like this. At such times they fre- 

 quent our neighborhood and trust themselves in our 

 midst. A life of fair-weather walks might never show 

 you the goose sailing on our waters, or the great heron 

 feeding here. When the storm increases, then these 

 great birds that carry the mail of the seasons lay to. 

 To see wild life you must go forth at a wild season. 

 When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then 

 the lover of Nature must forth. Then returns Nature 

 to her wild estate. In pleasant sunny weather you may 

 catch butterflies, but only when the storm rages that 

 lays prostrate the forest and wrecks the mariner, do 

 you come upon the feeding-grounds of wildest fowl, — 

 of heron and geese. 



May 14, 1853. Suddenly there start up from the 

 riverside at the entrance of Fair Haven Pond, scared 

 by our sail, two great blue herons, — slate-color rather, 

 — slowly flapping and undulating, their projecting 

 breast-bones very visible, — or is it possibly flieir necks 

 bent back? — their legs stuck out straight behind. Get- 



