12 
INTRODUCTION. 
the Cuckoo’s voice, thinks not of his boyhood, when, 
thoughtless of time’s passing wing, he has stopped 
by the wayside, and watched her building her nest ? 
Who that hears the song of the Blue-bird and Lin- 
net, finds not in their sweet notes a tie that binds to 
his heart some memory of the past ? and is ready to 
exclaim : 
“And I can listen to thee yet 
And lie upon the plain 
And listen till I do beget 
That golden time again. ” 
Birds are ever around us : — their busy active life 
displays itself wherever we turn our steps : — even at 
those seasons when most species have retired to the 
sunny south, a few still remain to cheer our hearts 
and enliven our homes. But it is in the spring and 
summer that we become most familiar with these 
feathered tenants of the air. When the clouds of 
winter, and its lowering storms, have rolled them- 
selves behind the hills, — when the sun shines out 
with renewed warmth and vigor, and the softened 
breath of Heaven wafts from the flowery fields and 
leafy woods a pleasing fragrance, the Blue-bird, the 
Song Sparrow, and the Bobin, with thousands of lovely 
comrades, fresh from their winter haunts, come again 
to cheer us with a welcome music. The Swallows 
twitter gaily as they sail over the meadows; the 
Wren, perched upon a neighboring twig, sings to his 
mate while she turns from her accustomed box the 
remains of last year’s nest; the busy little Warblers 
