230 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



I see probably neither end. A small flock of red-wings 

 singing as in spring. 



Jan. 8, 1855. I hear a few chickadees near at hand, 

 and hear and see jays further off, and, as yesterday, a 

 crow sitting sentinel on an apple tree. Soon he gives 

 the alarm, and several more take their places near him. 

 Then off they flap with their caw of various hoarseness. 



Jan. 12, 1855. Perhaps what most moves us in win- 

 ter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. How we 

 leap by the side of the open brooks ! What beauty in 

 the running brooks ! What life ! What society ! The 

 cold is merely superficial; it is summer still at the core, 

 far, far within. It is in the caWing of the crow, the 

 crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our 

 backs. I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far 

 away, echoing from some unseen wood-side, as if dead- 

 ened by the springlike vapor which the sun is drawing 

 from the ground. It mingles with the slight murmur of 

 the village, the sound of children at play, as one stream 

 empties gently into another, and the wild and tame are 

 one. What a delicious sound ! It is not merely crow 

 calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of 

 one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have 

 ears. I can hear when he calls, and have engaged not to 

 shoot nor stone him if he will caw to me each spring. 

 On the one hand, it may be, is the sound of children at 

 school saying their a, b, ab's, on the other, far in the 

 weod-fringed horizon, the cawing of crows from their 

 blessed eternal vacation, out at their long recess, chil- 

 dren who have got dismissed ! While the vaporous in- 

 cense goes up from all the fields of the spring — if it 



