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Smoky Mountain Singers 
By ERMA DEANE PILZ 
THIS IS AN ACCOUNT of a bird in the hand and two in the bush, as 
near a bird count as this unmathematical mind can approach. These were 
part and parcel of a few rich days in midsummer, at our farm at the foot 
of the Black mountains, the highest in western North Carolina, and some- 
what north of the national park. “Out of this world, and 150 years back 
in the woods,” should be included with the general directions. 
With our farmhouse occupied by a tenant, and our work of tearing 
down a weathered old tenant house that stood propped up on one elbow 
some acres away, it was exigent that we live in a tent pitched near the 
woods, where a sweet, cold spring gushed up in the hollow of great en- 
circling roots of hard maple. The “Ol’ Blacks,” as the range is commonly 
called, are named from the eternal darkness of the spruce trees that crowd 
the peaks. The mountains ooze the goodness of a heavy rainfall through 
the springs of the valleys. Many of the springs rise at the base of a giant 
tree, like our maple, and have come to be called by the name of the tree 
that cradles the water vein in its gnarled old roots. Our farm numbers 
many of these: the Beech Tree spring, the Maple spring, the Chestnut 
spring, for example, and each has a characteristic flow and temperature. 
A pair of bullfrogs had chosen our site at the Maple spring before we 
had, and numerous lizards and countless butterflies and insects. The laurel 
thicket nearby housed a pair of the most energetic, yet quiet, catbirds I 
have ever seen. They welcomed the break of day, and sang again at sun- 
set, but during the day darted quickly back in the bushes, working as hard 
at their job as we were occupied with ours. It is this pair of birds that 
we think of as two in the bush. They were as quiet as the Quaker folk in 
the next valley, and as busy, but never to be encountered in the laurels. 
The brown thrasher was also there, and his performance in the evening 
was a showy one. Sometimes he sang from the alder brush of “the 
branch,” an arm of a rushing mountain stream that gathered the waters of 
our springs before it rushed over the rocks to the fine trout creek that 
borders our land, and sometimes he flew to the tops of the great tulip trees, 
or black walnut trees, before he gave his performance; a veritable chest- 
thumping tenor, strutting from his stage and singing for his public. From 
off in the distance and in the eternal twilight of the deep woods, came the 
hauntingly lovely song of the wood thrush. I wondered that the mountain 
folk, whose entertainment, whose stories, whose ballads seem always to be 
marked with a pronounced predilection for the sad ending, had not made 
the sweet-sad fluting of the thrush their theme song, but no one appeared 
even to mark it as a strong minor theme in the bird chorus. 
At daybreak there was always, after a few tentative calls, a great rush 
of song that arched over the valley, and filled every part of the air with 
insistent music — then a lull, as if perhaps the great chorus had missed 
a cue and come on too soon. Then, just about the time the biscuits were 
browning over the outdoor fire, and the bacon and eggs beginning to sput- 
