cottage surrounded by dense spruce woods. I was roused 
a day or two after my arrival by hearing a strange warbler 
song. Almost daily would I rush madly after that “still small 
voice’’ which uttered constantly rather uninteresting syllables 
“chee-chee-chee-chee-tr-r-r-r” from the concealing green- 
ery of a thick fir. But, alas! never did I discover its owner. 
In all that month, though the will-o-the-wisp lured me into 
impenetrable thickets and over treacherous bogs, not once 
did I get him with recognizing distances of my glass. Certain- 
ly warbler songs are a post-graduate course in bird study! 
I wonder if you have ever noticed this family of warblers. 
They pass through in May, chiefly, and in such vast numbers 
that when you do begin to notice them you wonder how you 
have lived through so many Mays without even knowing 
that they were here. They are tiny creatures and in spite of 
their brilliant coloring we should see little of them if their 
restless flitting about did not attract the eye and make them 
visible. Brilliant colors can look very dull when seen against 
the sky, and are only seen in perfection against a background 
of foliage or the earth itself. When the warblers are at the 
height of their migration verily they possess the land. They 
certainly possess me — or I am possessed, whichever way you 
choose to put it. When I hear their short hurried songs and 
see the tree tops full of flitting forms I chase after them with 
as little heed to calls of duty or conscience within doors as 
the children who were lured by the wierd notes of the Pied 
Piper. There is always a chance that rare birds may be among 
them which may not pass my way again for years. I am 
continually on a search for certain warblers, which I have 
never seen here, the Prairie, the Kentucky — that gorgeous 
yellow beauty, the Prothonotary: but the search seems as 
vain as the pursuit of the pot of gold at the base of the rain- 
bow. However, when such birds as a yellow-breasted chat, 
a cardinal bird, a Carolina wren, and a Florida gallinule have 
greeted my astonished eyes here on the Lake Shore, who 
knows what may happen next? For ten years a friendly 
ornithological crank and I had watched for a chat, and when 
I was lucky enough to hear that extraordinary bird shouting 
his caws, honks, rattles, and cat-calls, and saw his dandelion 
colored breast gleaming in the sun, I stopped at the tele- 
graph office on the way home and according to previous agree- 
ment sent the two words ‘‘ Eureka, Chat.” over the wires to 
the little town in New York State where she was then 
abiding. 
Two or three of the warblers have the most insignificant 
insect-like songs, one, the golden-wing, though a feathered 
II 
