6 THE ASUS DEUrBiO Nee Bee aie eee 
ter, and the heavy fragrance of coffee had blotted out the delicate perfume 
of the albizzia bloom, the birds started in again, with less fervor, but 
a greater degree of steady sound. 
There were so many birds that individual songs lost their identity. Over 
near the farmhouse the robins sang just as they do in our city backyard. 
The phoebe, in a countryside veined with streams, perversely chose the 
rounded glass top of the electric meterbox by the farmhouse door as her 
nesting site. We thought her feverish anxiety and flight at every opening 
of the kitchen door would prevent her from rearing her family, but the 
young birds were well feathered and about ready to leave the nest when 
we last saw them. Next time, I hope, the flighty phoebe will return to the 
rafters of the great barn that borders the creek, where she can rear her 
young in greater peace. 
The flycatcher, probably the olive-sided, frequently screamed out during 
the day from the top of a dead tree. I asked some of the hill people what 
kind of a bird it was. “Just a little ol’ bird,” was the answer, but bro-o-ther, 
what a “little ol’ noise” that “little ol’ bird” could make! 
At one time or another, the cabin, with the hand-rived shingle roof 
which we were taking down, had housed at least one member of each of 
the 18 families who lived back up the mountain and, as we worked, there 
was usually one of its old residents standing quietly at hand to pay his 
last respects to his one-time home. Some gave us a hand with the work to 
be done. Others volunteered information about construction, but it was 
the children who showed us where the bluebirds had nested under the porch 
and where the cardinals had always come. The very last denizens of the 
weary old house had been a huge rat, who had collected everything from 
heaps of dried wild grapes to shot-gun shells and bird feathers of every 
color and size; and a “house-snake”’ — the identification will have to stand 
for all we ever saw of him was his head protruding between the boards; 
and an untold number of paper wasp colonies, whose larvae became both 
fish bait and bird food as we destroyed the nests. 
The blackberries had ripened while we worked on the old house, and 
since the usual fecund abundance of wild fruits had been curtailed with 
early growth and late frosts, the neighbors were apprehensive that I let 
the season pass without getting some of the fruit put by for winter use. 
So on one of the precious few days of sunshine I toiled up the mountain 
with a huge pail to be filled with berries, with Joeline and Marshall Silver, 
the young couple living in an old locust-log cabin on the next farm, as my 
fellow pickers. Joeline has the happiest, most musical laugh I have ever 
heard. It speaks of a full heart and contagious enjoyment. A sudden ripple 
of that sound set me to looking at her discovery. It was the nest of the 
song sparrow built in the briars where she picked, and the three greenish 
eggs with brown freckles were indeed something to be seen. 
“How about that? Food at the door, summat,” she remarked. “We’ll 
let it be — thar’s enough for the both of us otherwhere.” 
We turned our feet away. A good thing, too, for we were being followed 
by a brown bull calf, a spotted yearling heifer, a huge white draft horse, 
and a bright rust dog wherever we walked. I love a parade! 
