428 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



On the mountains, especially at Tuckerman's Ravine, 

 the notes even of familiar birds sounded strange to me. 

 I hardly knew the wood thrush and veery and oven- 

 bird at first. They sing differently there. 1 In two in- 

 stances, — going down the Mt. Jefferson road and along 

 the road in the Franconia Notch, — I started an F. hye- 

 malis within two feet, close to the roadside, but looked 

 in vain for a nest. They alight and sit thus close. I 

 doubt if the chipping sparrow is found about the moun- 

 tains. 



March 7, 1859. It is a good plan to go to some old 

 orchard on the south side of a hill, sit down, and listen, 

 especially in the morning when all is still. You can 

 thus often hear the distant warble of some bluebird 

 lately arrived, which, if you had been walking, would 

 not have been audible to you. As I walk, these first 

 mild spring days, with my coat thrown open, stepping 

 over tinkling rills of melting snow, excited by the sight 

 of the bare ground, especially the reddish subsoil where 

 it is exposed by a cutting, and by the few green radical 

 leaves, I stand still, shut my eyes, and listen from time 

 to time, in order to hear the note of some bird of pas- 

 sage just arrived. 



April 8, 1859. When the question of the protection 

 of birds comes up, the legislatures regard only a low use 

 and never a high use ; the best-disposed legislators em- 

 ploy one, perchance, only to examine their crops and see 

 how many grubs or cherries they contain, and never to 

 study their dispositions, or the beauty of their plumage, 



1 [His wood thrush and veery of Tuckerman's Ravine were probably 

 the olive-backed thrush and Bicknell's thrush, respectively.] 



