DOWN FERRY LANE. 



43 



should soon have wrens to spare in Concord, but I 

 have never seen one of the perk little chatterers since. 



A jet black bird with orange-red epaulettes flies 

 past, and I see that we are in the home of the red- 

 wings, though their favorite haunt is in the alder 

 thickets of the Back Ponds, where they breed in great 

 numbers. I hear a lively whoop from the bushes, and 

 then follows an exultant college yell, which one of my 

 musical friends has rendered : ' ' Look-a-here ! Look-a- 

 here! See me! See me! Happy! Happy! He-he-he- 

 Kickapoo ! Kickapoo ! Kyrie ! Kyrie ! Here ! ' ' Look- 

 ing up, I see the brown thrasher dive into the bushes. 

 He is a tawny bird with brass eyes and a long tail, 

 and he plunges into the thicket like a swimmer. No 

 one else sings with such frenzied abandon. Go up to 

 the young growth south of Blossom Hill, if you wish 

 to hear his ecstatic love-making. 



But we must not linger here, if we are to get to the 

 river. The road soon becomes little more than a cart- 

 track, but the bushes are full of warblers. The sum- 

 mer yellow-birds make this region their special home, 

 and they look like lumps of gold dodging through the 

 branches ; the illusion is not lost if you catch a glimpse 

 of the rusty red streaks on their breasts. The grass 

 is so rich in the meadows that the Lane is not a spe- 



