PLEASURE DERIVED FROM BIRDS. 
189 
makes use of seem to require, yet, by the middle or end 
of June, it loses its utterance, becomes hoarse, and 
ceases from any further essay of it. The croaking of 
the nightingale in June, or the end of May, is not ap- 
parently occasioned by the loss of voice, but a change 
of note, a change of object ; his song ceases when his 
mate has hatched her brood ; vigilance, anxiety, caution, 
now succeed to harmony, and his croak is the hush, the 
warning of danger or suspicion to the infant charge and 
the mother bird. 
But here I must close my notes of birds, lest their 
actions and their ways, so various and so pleasing, 
should lure me on to protract 
“ My tedious tale through many a page 
for I have always been an admirer of these elegant 
creatures, their notes, their nests, their eggs, and all the 
economy of their lives ; nor have we, throughout the 
orders of creation, any beings that so continually en- 
gage our attention as these our feathered companions. 
Winter takes from us all the gay world of the meads, 
the sylphs that hover over our flowers, that steal our 
sweets, that creep, or gently wing their way in glitter- 
ing splendor around us ; and of all the miraculous crea- 
tures that sported their hour in the sunny beam, the 
winter gnat (tipula hiemalis) alone remains to frolic in 
some rare and partial gleam. The myriads of the pool 
are dormant, or hidden from our sight ; the quadrupeds, 
few and wary, veil their actions in the glooms of night, 
and we see little of them ; but birds are with us al- . 
ways, they give a character to spring, and are identified 
with it ; they enchant and amuse us all summer long 
with their sports, animation, hilarity, and glee ; they 
cluster round us, suppliant in the winter of our year, 
and, unrepining through cold and want, seek their 
scanty meal amidst the refuse of the barn, the stalls of 
the cattle, or at the doors of our house ; or, flitting 
hungry from one denuded and bare spray to another, 
excite our pity and regard ; their lives are patterns of 
gaiety, cleanliness, alacrity, and joy. 
