The Pond-Meadow. 87 



When swimming they ripple their tails, and perhaps this 

 aids them in their progress. They make considerable way 

 against even the strongest tides, and leave well defined V- 

 shaped wakes. 



The high-tide bushes grow by the creek banks, and also 

 along the ditches on either side of the trestle, making two 

 dark green parallel lines in the lighter colored and shorter 

 meadow grass. These bushes are the home of the common 

 long-billed marsh-wrens, who weave their domed nests in 

 the branches, and whose bubbling, gushing songs, often 

 continue late into the night. I have heard them in June, 

 as late as 8.20 p. m., and they also sing until the middle of 

 September. Often they throw themselves into the air, and 

 fly slowly with a hovering, dangling flight, while they utter 

 their impetuous song, falling again into the meadow as 

 suddenly as they arose. It is pleasing to watch them go. 

 up and down a vertical stem, their tails most pertly turned 

 over their backs in the opposite direction from that more 

 fashionable adjustment of the same appendage in other 

 birds. They often linger about the lower beams of the 

 trestle, especially where some of them have been laid over 

 a reedy ditch, and on a neighboring plank-walk ; I remem- 

 ber one day, that my approaching foot-steps disturbed one 

 of these sprightly little birds, and instead of jumping off 

 its side, as a sparrow would have done, it simply slipped 

 between two of the boards and disappeared into the 

 meadow below. The sea-side finches are neighbors of the 

 marsh- wrens and at evening a number of them sing along 

 the creek, their quaint song being among the most enter- 

 taining to be heard from the trestle. It starts pleasantly 



