NATURK STUDY. 
56 
note, which is generally answered by the male near by, and 
in a moment the female flies to a twig just above the nest. 
The spot is an ideal home for this most imaginative of our 
singers. A little brook flows out from a deep pine wood 
into a thicket of alders. Its banks are covered with a deep 
carpet of vegetation, composed of moss, lycopodium, and 
ferns, in which the leaves of Einnsea, wood sorrel, dalibar- 
da and pyrola show the succession of bloom which it has 
borne through the summer. Sunk deep into this soft car¬ 
pet, a foot or two from the stream is the nest. Earlier in 
the season the male has sung for hours from the branches 
of the pines, while the female was brooding ; now his per¬ 
iod of song is over, but as long as I am in the tent, he perch¬ 
es near by and utters the alarm notes of his species, a low 
chuck or nasal spcke and raises his tail slowly. Even at 
this late date, an occasional song comes to me in my tent, 
from a wood peewee, a gold finch, or an indigo bird. On 
the 18th the first migrant, a water thrush, tripped over the 
stones in the brook. Red-bellied nuthatches call in the 
pines, and from far up on the hillside comes the pill, pill of 
the olive-sided fly catcher. The feeling of intimacy with 
the woods and their inhabitants grows stronger for each 
hour spent thus silently in their company. I look forward 
with the keenest delight to the hours I shall spend next 
summer in the tent beside the nest of—what shall it be,— 
with all the birds of forest, field and wayside to choose from 
it will be hard to make a choice ; the days will be far too 
short. 
Alstead Centre, N. H., Aug. 22, 1901. 
