They, too, may have their literatureunwritten, howeveron the dignity of labor.

Life is real, life is earnest, might be just as truly said of our little brothers of the air as of us, their big brothers of the soil. If you think that their whole career consists of nothing but play and song and bounding joy, you have seen very little of the bird life around you. For the mother bird, at least, the whole period of nesting, sometimes extending over several months, is a time of drudgery, anxiety, and, far too often, of disappointed hopes. I have heard a bird mothers wail that went like iron into my soul, and told me all too plainly that it had come from a bereft and broken heart. When we remember how many tragedies occur in the feathered community, we scarcely care about singing, I wish I were a little bird. Had you witnessed the unutterable agony of a pair of yellow-breasted  chats one spring, when their four pretty bairns were stolen by some heartless buccaneer, you would have thanked the Pleiades, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and all your other lucky stars, that you were a man or woman and not a bird.
Oh! it would be so pleasant to fly and tilt in the air, to dash from twig to twig, to make long aerial voyages to foreign countries! Do I hear you say that? Wait a moment. Have you ever thought that even the long, bounding flight of the swallows and swifts, accomplished apparently without effort, may sometimes become a weariness to the flesh, especially when insects are scarce and their maws empty? Then, those long nocturnal journeys that birds make during the migrating season may often tax their strength to the utmost. Indeed, if you will listen to their feeble chirping, as they sweep overhead through the darkness, you will often detect a note of fatigue running through it, as much as to say, Ah, I wish we were at our journeys end! No, bird life is not all roseate. It has its humdrum and drudgery, its wear and tear, its prose as well as its poetry, its hard realism as well as its romance.
One of the tasks of bird life is the building of nests. It is true, the birds always do this work with a zest that makes it seem half play; but, after spending a day in gathering material and weaving it into the nest, scarcely taking time to stop for meals, I have no doubt the little toilers are ready to retire when bedtime comes. Have you ever watched these  little artists constructing their nests? They first lay the foundation, which is usually made of rather coarse material, and is more or less loosely woven; and then they proceed to build the superstructure. Some birds, like the robin and the bluebird, will have their mouths full of material every time they come to the nest; while others, such as the dainty warblers, will return with a single fibre. Usually the bird leaps into the cup of the nest, and deftly weaves in the new material with its bill; and then shifts around with a quivering motion of body and wings, to give the structure proper shape and size. The nest must be made to fit the body of the bird like a glove, so that she may rest easily in it during the long period of incubation. The robin and the wood-thrush bring mud and clay; this they mix, no doubt, with their own saliva, which gives it its viscid character. The dainty, blue-gray gnat-catcher collects lichens of various kinds, with which she decorates the high walls of her compact little cottage. Does this tiny artist sometimes build nests just for fun or æsthetic effect? I watched the building of two nests one spring that were never used. With what a graceful touch the feathered dots laid the lichen bricks in the walls!
The hatching of the eggs must be a severe tax on the patience of the mother bird, for the principal part of this work devolves upon her. Sitting hour by hour upon the nest, looking out upon the wide spaces of air waiting to be conquered by her active wings; with nothing except hope to feed her mind; with not even a book or a newspaper to read,well,  here is a chance to let patience have her perfect work. Then think of her uneasiness at the approach of every foe. It is work; it is not mere idleness. As for her lord, it may seem only like holiday sport to sit in the tree-top and sing all the livelong day, to beguile the weary hours of his sitting mate. But perhaps it often takes on the hue of work, too, when singing becomes a duty. Small wonder, if the choralists vocal chords often become jaded and sore, while there may be danger of bringing on throat or lung trouble. Besides, he must often carry a dainty morsel to his spouse when he would much prefer to eat it himself. Then, he must take his turn on the nest while his partner goes off for a constitutional to get the stiffness out of her joints, or gathers a relay of food and preens her ruffled plumes.
One of the most unpleasant tasks of the time of incubation and brood rearing is the warding off of enemies. And they are numerous. No feathered parents can feel sure that they shall be able to tide their little family safely over this perilous period. Have you ever seen the plucky wood-pewee engaging in a contest with that highwayman in feathers, the blue jay? How he dashes at the bloodthirsty villain, snapping his mandibles viciously at every onset, and sometimes pecking a feather from his enemys back! Nor will he give up the battle until the jay steals off with a hangdog expression on his face. The little warbling vireo is no less game when the jay comes too near his precincts.

One day in spring I was witness to a curious incident. A red-headed woodpecker had been flying several times in and out of a hole in a tree where he (or she) had a nest. At length, when he remained within the cavity for some minutes, I stepped to the tree and rapped on the trunk with my cane. The bird bolted like a small cannon-ball from the orifice, wheeled around the tree with a swiftness that the eye could scarcely follow, and then dashed up the lane to an orchard a short distance away. But he had only leaped out of the frying-pan into the fire. In the orchard he had unconsciously got too near a king-birds nest. The king-bird swooped toward him, and alighted on his back. The next moment the two birds, the king-bird on the woodpeckers back, went racing across the meadow like a streak of zigzag lightning, making a clatter that frightened every echo from its hiding-place. That gamy flycatcher actually clung to the woodpeckers back until he reached the other end of the meadow. I cannot be sure, but he seemed to be holding to the woodpeckers dorsal feathers with his bill. Then, bantam fellow that he was, he dashed back to the orchard with a loud chippering of exultation. Ah, ha! he flung across to the blushing woodpecker; stay away the next time, if you dont fancy being converted into a beast of burden!
A large part of a birds toil, after there are children in the nest, consists in providing victuals for them. For this purpose the whole country around must be scoured, and sometimes long journeys must  be made. I have watched a kingfisher flying again and again from a winding creek in the valley to her nest on a hillside nearly a half-mile distant, with a minnow in her bill, while the sun was pouring a sweltering deluge upon the fields. It kept her busy every moment to supply the imperious demands of her hungry brood in the bank. A common field-bird, which I watched one day for a long while, would often return to her nest every minute with an insect. Many, many times have I obeyed Lowells injunction,
Come up and feel what health there is
In the frank Dawns delighted eyes,
As, bending with a pitying kiss,
The night-shed tears of Earth she dries.
But even at that early hour the feathered toilers have always been ahead of the human wage-workers in beginning the labors of the day. The nestlings must have a twilight breakfast; and then, in the evening, as long as the gloaming lasts, they noisily demand just one more mouthful for supper.
Young birds are ravenous feeders. They seem to live to eat, and have no thought of eating to live. For an hour and a half, one August day, I kept watch of a nestful of bantlings, and during that time the parent birds were so shy that they fed their infants only twice. At last the little things became fairly desperate for food, springing up in the nest and opening their mouths with pitiful cries every time the breeze stirred the bushes about them.  They were so famished that I hurried away lest they should go to preying on one another, for they would sometimes greedily seize one another by the bills or heads, and try to gobble one another down. Incidents like this prove that the old birds must be on the jump every moment to procure a sufficient supply of food for their young. Even after they have left the nest, the juvenile members of the family must be fed for several weeks. As long as mamma and papa will get their luncheons for them, they will make little effort to help themselves. I have seen the dainty little accentor feeding a great, overgrown mossback of a cow-bunting, which had to juke down to her like a giant to a dwarf to receive the morsel she offered him. What a drudgery it must have been to collect victuals enough to fill his capacious maw! Think of a toil-worn, care-fretted little mother feeding a strapping boy that will not work!
Moreover, adult birds often are kept busy for hours supplying their own craving for food. One April day a hooded warbler, natty little beau, near an old gravel-bank in the woods, was watched by me for an hour and a half. During that time he must have caught an insect almost every minute, and sometimes no sooner had he gulped down one than he made a swift dash for another. Had he not been so very, very handsome, I should have dubbed him a gourmand.
At certain seasons of the year what an active life the red-headed woodpeckers are compelled to lead,  in order to satisfy the demands of their stomachs! With intervals of scarcely more than a few seconds, they bound out from a perch, seize an insect on the wing, and wheel back again. For hours this half work, half frolic is kept up. By the way, almost all birds sometimes engage in this flycatcher game of taking their prey on the wing. The Baltimore orioles, the bluebirds, the yellow-bellied woodpeckers, the crested tits, the chippies, the indigo-birds, and even the white-breasted nuthatches and English sparrows, to say nothing of many species of warblers, catch insects in this way.
Many birds have to scratch for a living, and that in a literal sense. There is the towhee bunting, for example. Instead of getting down on his breast, however, like the hen or the partridge, he stretches himself up on his legs as if they were stilts, and then bobs up and down in an amusing fashion, while he scatters leaves and dirt to side and rear. I do not know whether the robins scratch or not, but they often jerk the leaves from the ground with their bills, and hurl them away with a half-disdainful air. Several young wood-thrushes kept in a cage removed obstructions in the same way.
Even the merry bobolink, the Beau Brummel of our meadows and clover-fields, cannot spend every day
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony;
for the time comes when he must do the work of a staid husband and father, and help to take care of  the growing brood. With all his pirouetting in the air, he carries in his bosom an anxious heart, as you will quickly see if you go too near his snuggery in the grass. The wild scramble in which birds of all kinds often have to engage, in order to secure a refractory insect, proves that there is ample room for the play of their best energies. Thus we see that the birds have plenty to do besides rollicking, singing, enjoying gala-days, and taking excursions to gay watering-places. Like their human brothers and sisters, they must toil patiently on through the every-dayness of this work-day world. They, too, may have their literatureunwritten, howeveron the dignity of labor.

My high-school pupils soon learned to quarrel.

It is not to be supposed that there is a regularly graded system of instruction in the school-life of the birds. There may be method in their learning, but it would be difficult to state positively just where the primary, grammar, high-school, and college grades merge into one another, or when diplomas of efficiency are granted, if granted at all. But that there is something of a system of pedagogy among birds, and that the juniors do receive instruction from their seniors, no observer of feathered life can doubt for a moment. In the systems of human instruction the child-life of the young learner usually ends with his high-school course; he then stands at the threshold of young manhood, ready to do a good deal of wrestling with his problems on his own account. Taking that fact as our cue, we should say that the high-school instruction of the youthful bird begins when he leaves the nest, and ends when he is able to fly with dexterity, and provide for his own support, at least in the main. It is not probable that the lecture system prevails in the bird community,  or the method of class instruction now in vogue, or that books and charts and blackboards are used; but the instruction is chiefly individual, and is carried on mostly by example, coercion, and urgent appeal. There is not an inexhaustible number of branches to be pursued by the little undergraduates in plumes; but their efforts at obtaining an education consist chiefly in mastering three grand accomplishments,flying, feeding, and singing.
If ever you have seen a bevy of young red-headed woodpeckers, led by several of their elders, taking their wing-exercises, choosing a certain tree in the woods for a point of departure, and then sailing around and around with loud cries of delight, you must have concluded that it was a veritable class in calisthenics. One seldom has an opportunity to see young birds taking their first lessons in flight, but it is worth ones time and patience to be present at such a recitation. The parents set the example by flying from the nest to a perch near by, and then coax and scold their children to follow their example. If the little learners hesitate, as they usually do, their impatient teachers exclaim: Why, just try it once. You never will learn to fly any younger. If you will only spread your wings, let go of the rim of the nest, and venture out on the air, you will find that it will bear you up. Dont be afraid. But perhaps the pupils complain that it makes their heads dizzy to look down from their awful height. Then the teachers pooh-pooh at their fears, and cry condescendingly, The idea of being afraid! Why,  just see here! and they mount up into the air, poise, careen, and perform other extraordinary feats, while the youngsters gaze at them in wide-eyed wonder. At last, after much persuasion and many half-attempts, one of the youngsters spreads his pinions and flutters laboriously until he scrambles upon the nearest twig, with bated breath and throbbing pulses. He is frightened half to death, but he has found that the friendly air will support him if he makes proper use of his wings, and so he will soon make another effort, and another, until he begins really to enjoy the exercise. However, several days may elapse before the youngest and weakest member of the class can muster sufficient courage to take his first aerial journey.
Some species of birds graduate from the nest much sooner than others. In one case I observed that a family of goldfinches remained in the nest just seven days after a family of bush-sparrows, hatched on the same day, had taken their flight.[8] The yellow-billed cuckoo has given me no little surprise in this respect. When he first creeps out of his shell apartment, he is a callow, ungainly infant, black as coal, with a sparse covering of stiff bristles; but almost before a week has passed, he has hopped from his washed-out cradle to try the realities of the great world around him. Why the agile little goldfinch should remain in the crib so much longer than his less dexterous fellow-pupil,  the cuckoo, is a problem of bird school-life that I must leave for solution to wiser heads.
Having gone from the nest, the young bird has not yet learned all about the art of flying; no, indeed! He must become perfect by practice. Many a blunder will he make. At first he cannot always nicely calculate the distance to the twig that he has in view, and so he fails to give himself the proper propulsive force; he misses his footing by going too far, or not far enough, and then where he will alight is a question of what he happens to strike first. Probably a wild, desperate scramble will ensue, which ends only when the youthful novice has fallen plump upon the ground. He may be very much alarmed; but as soon as he recovers his breath, his courage rises, and he tries again.
Although the young birds have the whole world for their larder, with victuals just to their taste constantly at their elbow, they must learn even the art of eating, and, until they do so, they demand that their parents be their caterers. For several weeks after they have passed the first term of school-life, they will still sit on a limb, open their mouths, twinkle their wings, and allow their patient victuallers to thrust morsel after morsel down their throats. My opinion is that the patience of their parents wears out after a time, and they leave the overgrown youngster to paddle for himself. How proud he must be of the exploit when he catches his first insect and successfully stows it away in his maw! In a deep, quiet glen I watched a  family of young phbes and their parents catching insects on the wing. It was amusing. The old birds evidently felt that it was about time for their pupils to learn to provide their own victuals, but the youngsters stoutly demanded that their luncheons be brought them in the accustomed manner. They must have noticed that the old birds would occasionally catch an insect and dispose of it themselves. Once when the parent bird darted out for a small cabbage butterfly, a young fellow swooped down at her with such force that she let the insect squirm out of her bill and flutter to the ground, and thus make good its escape before she could recover it. Both birds lost their dinner through the greed and rashness of the little gourmand. Another time an old bird caught a yellow butterfly, dashed to a limb, and quickly gulped it down, wings and all, before any of the presumptuous high-schoolers could reach him. The bearing of the bird was most laughable. Finally, several of the young birds darted out into the air for passing insects, proving that they were taking lessons in that fine art; but their gymnastics were far from perfect, and they hit the mark scarcely half the time.
With most young birds music is a part of their high-school curriculum. Perhaps you have thought that they learn their lessons in vocal music without special instruction, but this is not always the case. Observation proves that the old birds have them under tutelage, setting them lyrical copies, which they are expected to learn by frequent rehearsal.  I have myself observed such a performance in the case of the wood-pewee, as described in the chapter on Midsummer Melodies. First attempts are crude and awkward, although the tones may be very fine. It requires frequent drill to bring the vocal organs under perfect control, just as is the case with human singers. If you have listened to the squeaking, chattering, twittering medley of young song-sparrows, you have realized how much practice is necessary before the would-be vocalists will be able to execute the wonderful trills of which they are master when they graduate from the musical conservatory.
I must tell you of a little bird high-school class over which I once assumed charge. It consisted of three wood-thrushes, two bluebirds, and a brown thrasher, all of which were taken from the nest before they were ready to fly, and confined in a large wire cage. Very soon they learned to take food from my hand. But in many things that are essential to bird life and bird weal they had no tutors and no drill-masters, and therefore had to learn them as best they could. Yet it was surprising how soon they gained proficiency. Without a single copy from adult birds, all of them were able to fly about from perch to perch in a few days. It was not more than a week before they began to pick in an awkward way, but after more than five weeks they would still open their mouths and take food from the hand. The mechanical act of eating was something they had to learn by slow degrees. While  they could readily pick up a tidbit, it seemed to be a difficult task to get it back far enough into the mouth to swallow it. This was especially true of the thrasher, whose bill was long. How he would toss a morsel about, pinch it, fling it away, catch it up again, and pound it against a perch, before he could work it back into his capacious throat!
They were amusing pets, those feathered pupils of mine. From them I have gained an insight into bird character which could have been gained in no other way. The difficulty in observing birds in the wild state is, you cannot study them at close range, and hence cannot watch their development from day to day. None the less interesting were my little pupils because they had to depend on their own wits and learn their lessons without a pedagogue. How did they learn to bathe without being shown how! They learned it, that is sure; and they went through the exercise precisely as birds do in the wildwood. They would leap into the bath-dish, duck their heads into the water, flutter their wings and tails until thoroughly rinsed, and then fly up to a perch to preen their bedrenched plumage. But they made some mirth-provoking blunders. One day a wood-thrush got astride of the rim of his bath-tub, one leg outside and the other inside, and in that interesting position tried to take his ablution. He looked exceedingly droll, and seemingly could not understand why he did not succeed better. Another time the thrasher remained outside of the bath-dish, and thrust his head over the rim into the water, squatting  on the sand and twinkling his pinions. But the time came when all the birds discovered of their own accord that the proper way was to leap right into the lavatory.
How early in life do juvenile birds begin to sing? That is a question, I venture to say, that very few students of bird life would be able to answer. It may be difficult to believeif my own ears had not heard, I should be very skeptical of the accuracy of the assertionbut my wood-thrushes had not been in my care more than three or four weeks before one of them began to twitter a little song. He could not have been much more than five weeks old. This is all the more remarkable when it is remembered that there were no adult thrushes within a half-mile of the house. He seemed to discover that he had a voice, and thought he might as well use it.
Ah, yes, and sad to relate, my high-school pupils soon learned to quarrel, and that without the example of their elders. When I threw a billsome morsel on the floor of the cage, several of them would make a dive for it, and soon get into a wrangle. Its mine! its mine! each would proclaim by his greedy behavior. Then perhaps two would seize it, and tug at it like boys fighting for an apple. Or if one contrived to get it first, the rest would try to wrench it from his beak, and thus they would pursue one another about in a wild chase. The thrasher, being younger than his fellows, was for a time cheated out of every choice morsel he  secured; but he finally learned to help himself and swallow his victuals instanter. Two of the thrushes, probably males, seemed to have a mutual grudge. They would pursue each other until the fugitive would turn and stand at bay, snapping his mandibles in a savage manner, as if they were worked by steel springs. I regret being compelled to publish these pugnacious tendencies in my beloved pets; but I prefer giving a realistic rather than a fictitious or roseate sketch of the school-days of these pupils in plumes.

In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow,

No one who has studied the birds can deny that there is genuine sexual love among them. Many species act on the principle that a pure life for two is the only kind of life to live, and therefore a match once made is a match that lasts until death does them part. There may be fickleness, divorce, and downright unfaithfulness among birds sometimes, and there certainly is polygamy among some species; but such examples of irregularity are rather the exception than the rule. Monogamy largely prevails, and I have no doubt that any departure from the regular connubial relation creates a scandal in bird circles.
As in the human world, so in the bird world a period of courtship precedes the celebration of the nuptials. But the mode differs in different kingdoms of creation. Many lovers in feathers conduct their  wooing in a somewhat rudely persistent and obtrusive fashion. Society would soon ostracize the human suitor having such manners, and might even consider him amenable to the civil courts, and put him in jail as a character unfit to be abroad. However, if hot pursuit, brazen manners, and half-coercive measures are considered good form in bird land, we of the human genus are the last who have a right to find fault, for are we not the most conventional beings on the face of the earth? You might almost as well be in limbo or inferno as out of style. Was there not a time when even the flaming sunflower was regarded as the highest emblem of the beautiful, merely because it was the fad, and not because anybody really felt that it possessed special æsthetic qualities? People who live in glass houses ought not to throw stones, is the saucy challenge of the merry chickadee to his human critic, as he dashes, like an animated nigger-chaser, after the little Dulcinea whom he has marked for his bride. Then he stops, and, balancing on a spray, whistles his sweetest minor tune, Pe-e-w-e-e, pe-e-e-w-e-e; which, being interpreted, probably means,
Does not all the blood within me
Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee,
As the spring to meet the sunshine?
No doubt many a feathered swain is smitten, and smitten very deeply too, with Cupids arrow, flung by some charming capturer of hearts. A little boys love-letter to a lassie who had taken his throbbing  heart by storm, ran thus: I love you very dearly. You are so nice that I dont blame anybody for falling in love with you. I dont see why everybody doesnt fall in love with you. If one may judge from the impetuosity with which most feathered lovers press their suits, there must be many instances of such captivation in bird land.
Have you ever been witness of the wooing of that half-knightly, half-boorish bird, the yellow-hammer? In the grove near my house several pairs of these birds had a great time one spring settling their hymeneal affairs. For hours a lover would pursue the object of his affections around and around, never giving her a moments respite. No sooner had she gone bounding to another tree than he would dash after, often flinging himself recklessly right upon the spot where she had alighted, compelling her to hitch away, to avoid being struck by her impetuous lover. His policy seemed to be to take her heart by storm, to wear her out, to give her no time to think matters over, to compel her, nolens volens, to consent to his proposed marital alliance. No doubt she finally, said yes, merely to get rid of him, and then failed of her purpose. After the courtship has passed its first stage, and the wooed one has grown less shy, the bowings and scrapings of the yellow-hammers are truly ludicrous. The female will flit away only a short distance, and will sometimes turn toward her mottled suitor, when they will wag their heads at each other, now to this side, now to that, in the most serio-comical manner imaginable. It is the  way these lords and ladies of woodpeckerdom make their royal obeisances.
On a pleasant day in February two downy woodpeckers were scraping acquaintance. The male pursued his sweetheart about in the trees after the manner of his kind; but occasionally she would stand at bay and apparently challenge him to come nearer if he dared. Then both of them would lift their striped forms to an almost perpendicular position, their heads and beaks pointing straight toward the sky, and their bodies swaying grotesquely from side to side. This little comedy over, the finical miss bolted to another tree, with her cavalier in hot pursuit.
Coy as the feathered ladies usually seem, many of them apparently are genuine flirts, and would feel greatly disappointed should their lovers give over the chase. They evidently want to be won, but not too easily. (Perhaps it might be said, en passant, there are belles in other than the bird community who resort to similar naïve and winsome ruses.) In a shady nook of the woods I once saw a gallant towhee bunting employing all the arts at his command to win a damsel who seemed very demure. He was an extremely handsomely formed and finely clad bird,a real édition de luxe. He flew down to the ground, picked up a brown leaf in his bill, and flourished it at her, as much as to say, It is time for nest-building, dear. Then he spread his wings and handsome tail, and strutted almost like a peacock about on the leafy ground. But, no, she would not, and  she would not, and there was no use in talking; she flitted, half contemptuously, to a more distant bush. That proud cockney need not think she cared for him! She wasnt going to lose her heart to every lovelorn swain who came along. But, mark you, when I tried to separate them, by driving one to one side of the path and the other to the opposite side, the little hypocrite contrived every time, with admirable finesse, to flit over toward her knightly suitor. Three times the experiment brought the same result. Her maidenly reserve had a good deal of calculation in it, after all, innocent as she appeared. Perhaps she had conned Longfellows wise quatrain:
How can I tell the signals and the signs
By which one heart another heart divines?
How can I tell the many thousand ways
By which it keeps the secret it betrays?
That the course of true love does not always run smooth in the bird world as elsewhere, goes without saying. There are feuds and jealousies. Sometimes two beaux admire the same belle, and then there may be war to the death. I have seen two rival song-sparrows clutch in the air, peck and claw at each other viciously, and come down to the ground with a thud that must have knocked the breath out of them for a few moments. Incredible as it may seem, an acute observer of bird life declares that the females are most likely to quarrel and fight over their lovers. At such times the male stands by, looks on approvingly, and lets them fight it out, no  doubt pluming himself on the fact that he is of sufficient importance to be the cause of a duel or a sparring-match among the ladies.
Even those birds that seem to be the impersonation of kindliness often engage in vigorous wrangles before they are able to settle the troubles that arise from match-making. The bluebird, of the siren voice and cerulean hue, is a case in point. Mr. Burroughs describes, in his inimitable way, the vigorous campaign of two pairs of bluebirds, which could not decide the subject of matrimony among themselves without resort to arms. Both the males and females engaged in more than one set-to. Once the hotheaded lovers closed with each other in the air, fell to the ploughed ground, and remained there, tugging and pecking and tweaking for nearly two minutes. Yet, when they separated, neither seemed to be any the worse for the mêlée.
The tiny hummers are extremely belligerent birds. A writer describes the contests of certain hummingbirds in the island of Jamaica when moved by jealousy. When two males have become rivals, they will level their long, pointed bills at each other, and then dash together with the swiftness of an arrow; they meet, separate, meet again, with shrill chirping, dart upward, then downward, and circle around and around, until the eye grows weary of watching them, and can no longer follow their rapid transits. At length one falls, exhausted, to the ground, while the other rests, panting and trembling, on a leafy spray, or perhaps tumbles, mortally wounded, to the earth.  There are some diminutive hummers, called Mexican stars, which become perfect furies when their jealousy is aroused. Their throats swell; their crests, wings, and tails expand; and they clinch and spear each other in the air like the veriest disciples of Bellona. Thus a giant passion may dwell in a pygmy form.
It will be pleasant to turn to more gentle ways of pressing a love-suit. The manners of some males are very courtly while trying to win a spouse. They strut about most gracefully, and display their plumes to the best advantage, as if they would charm the coy damsel of their choice. The dainty kinglets erect and expand their crest feathers so that the golden or ruby spot spreads over the entire crown, making them look handsome indeed.
It has never been my good fortune to witness the wooing of the ruffed grouse, miscalled the partridge in New England and the pheasant in the Middle States; but Mr. Langille has seen the performance, and with good reason goes into raptures over it. He describes it in this way: Behold the male strutting before the female in time of courtship! The first time I saw him in this act I was utterly at a loss to identify him. The ruff about the neck is perfectly erect, so that the head is almost disguised; the wings are partially opened and drooped gracefully; the feathers are generally elevated; the tail, with its rich, black band, is spread to the utmost and thrown forward. Thus he stands, nearly motionless, a genuine object of beauty.

One of the most brilliant exhibitions of this kind must be that of the great emerald birds of Paradise, as they disport themselves before the object of their affection. They gather in flocks of from twelve to twenty on certain trees. Mr. A. R. Wallace, in his Malay Archipelago, gives an interesting description of these dancing-parties, as they are called by the natives. The wings of the male birds, he says, are raised vertically over the back; the head is bent down and stretched out; and the long plumesthose that spring like spray from the sides or shouldersare raised and expanded till they form two magnificent golden fans, striped with deep red at the base, and fading off into the pale brown tint of the finely divided and softly waving points; the whole bird is then overshadowed by them, the crouching body, yellow head, and emerald-green throat forming but a foundation and setting to the golden glory which waves above them.
No wonder the maidens reserve all melts away, and she soon yields willing consent to her lovers importunings! There is only one flaw in this beautiful picture, and that is made by man himself,man, the meddler in avian happiness. While the birds are absorbed in their courtship, the natives, for love of pelf, steal near and shoot them with blunt arrows. Sometimes all the males are thus murdered, ruthlessly, heartlessly, before the danger is discovered. Of course the mercenary butchers sell the plumes for decorative purposes. Gold is the only thing that glitters in the eyes of a sordid world. Some people spell God with an l.

No doubt vocal display also plays a large part in the courtship of birds. Nothing else in the early spring can wholly account for the wonderful musical tournaments that one hears lilting so lavishly on the air. Many a damsel, doubtless, listens to the numerous vocalists of her neighborhood, and then chooses the suitor whose voice possesses the finest qualities, or whose madrigals have the truest ring. How many things may combine to determine the choice of the parties, it would be difficult to say. Perhaps some birds are handsomer than others in the eyes of those that are looking for mates; perhaps some have more courtly and agreeable manners; perhaps some put more fervor into their wooing or more passion into their songs; perhaps some are better tempered; others may be more industrious or frugal or tidy, and thus will make better husbands or housewives. Many a lass doubtless is sorely puzzled as to whom she shall choose for a mate. One may even fancy her crooning Addisons quaint, paradoxical lines to a whimsical lover concerning whose eligibility she harbors some doubt,
In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow,
Thourt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,
Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee,
That theres no living with thee or without thee.
One questionnot a profound one, I confessmust bring this chapter to a close: Do the plumed ladies ever propose? One might imagine a lovelorn female bird throwing aside her maidenly reserve  in a fit of desperation, and singing the lines of Mrs. Browning,
But I love you, sir;
And when a woman says she loves a man,
The man must hear her, though he love her not.
II.

An early morning hour found me climbing the acclivity

A four days outing along the Ohio River one spring brought me some finds that may be of interest to bird lovers. Everywhere there were the twinkle of wings, the twitter of voices, and the charm of song; indeed, so plentiful were the feathered folk that the title of this article is far less poetical than realistic and descriptive. It was the latter part of May, the time in that latitude when the birds were in full song, at least those which were not too busy with their family cares. Sixty-four species were seen during a stay of four days in the neighborhood.
Mine host was a farmer whose premises afforded a habitat for numerous birds, there being many trees and bushes in the yard and a large orchard near by. In one of the silver maples a pair of warbling vireos had built a tiny pendent cradle, as is their wont, set in a bower of shining twigs and green leaves. There it swayed in the zephyrs, rocking the birdlings to sleep and filling their dreams with rhythm; and the lullabies that the happy  parents sang were cheerful and engaging, in spite of the fact that some critic has pronounced the minstrelsy of the warbling vireo tiresome. Tiresome, forsooth! Truth to tell, the more closely you listen to it the sweeter it grows. All day long, from peep of dawn to evening twilight, those quaint, continuous lays could be heard, now subdued and desultory, now almost as vigorous as a robins carol.
It sometimes seemed as if the vireos and orchard orioles were rival vocalists. If so, a prize should be awarded to both,to the vireos for persistency, for never letting up; to the orioles for richness and melody of tone. Many a rollicking two-part concert they gave.
But there were other voices frequently heard in the chorus, though not so continuously as those of the birds just mentioned. A song-sparrow, which had built a dainty cot in a bush not two rods from the veranda, sometimes trilled an interlude of entrancing sweetness, taking the bays for real tunefulness from every rival. Then, to my surprise, a Maryland yellow-throat, shy little fellow in other places, would frequently sing his heart out in the small trees and silver maples of the front yard. He did not fly off or discontinue his song when an auditor stood right beneath his perch, but would throw back his masked head, distend his golden throat, and deliver his trill to his own and everybody elses satisfaction. Very often, too, the indigo-bird, just returned from a bath in the cerulean depths, would enrich the harmony with the most  rollicksome, if not the most tuneful lay of the chorus. As a sort of accompaniment, the chipping-sparrow often trilled his silvery monotone; and once a robin added his Cheerily, here, here!
So much for the birds about the house, though there were many others that have not been mentioned; in fact, there were some twenty species in all. There were also birds a-plenty in other places. A half day was spent in some fields bordering the broad river. On a green slope was a bush-sparrows nest, daintily bowered in the grass by the side of a blackberry bush, and in a thicket hard by two yellow-breasted chats had placed their grassy cradles, proclaiming their secret to all the world by their loud cries of warning to keep away. It is odd that these birds, shy and nervous as they are, should go so far out of their way to tell you that they have a nest somewhere in the copse that you mustnt touch, mustnt even look for. While you are yet a quarter of a mile away, they will utter their loud cries of warning; and if you go to the thicket where they are, you will be almost sure to find their nest, so poorly have they learned the lesson of discretion.
In a little hollow of the copse a dying crow lay prone upon the ground. At intervals he would struggle and gasp in a spasmodic way. When I gently moved him with my cane, he grasped it with his claws and held it quite firmly. I put the stick to his large black beak. He took hold of it feebly, ready to defend himself even with his last gasp, for that it proved to be; he lay over and died the next  instant. I could not give the pathology of the case, as no wounds could be found on his body.
One of the most interesting finds of the day was the nest of a green heron, often called fly-up-the-creek. The nest, only a loosely constructed platform of sticks, was placed on the branches of a leaning clump of small trees, and was about twenty feet from the ground. The startled bird flew back and forth in the row of trees, and even went back to the nest while I watched her at a distance, but was too shy to remain there when I went near. In spite of the offensive nicknames foisted upon this heron, it is a handsome bird. As this one flew back and forth she made quite an elegant picture, with her long, glossy-brown neck and tail, white throat-line, ash-blue back, dappled under parts, and the long, slender feathers draping her hind-neck. But why was she called the green heron? Look as sharply as I would, I could descry no green in her plumage. A few days later, however, I examined a mounted specimen, and then the puzzle was solved; for an iridescent green patch on the wing was so marked a feature of its coloration as to account for the birds common name.
Memory will always linger fondly about a certain afternoon and evening spent on the steep hills mounting up toward the sky a quarter of a mile or more back from the river. To a pedestrian like myself, used to rambling over a comparatively level scope of country, these high hills afforded a wonderful prospect, and almost made my head dizzy, as I  clambered far up their steep sides. Perhaps the mountain-climber would think them tame. It made my head swim that evening to see a towhee bunting dart from a copse near by and hurl himself with reckless abandon down the declivity, as if there were not the slightest danger of breaking his neck or dashing himself to pieces. He stopped just in time to plunge into another thicket for which he had taken aim.
As the sun sank, I seated myself on the grass far up the steep, and looked down on the beautiful valley below me. There was the broad Ohio, wending its way between the sentinel hills, the green clover fields and meadows smiling good-night to the sinking sun, and the brown ploughed fields with their green corn-rows. A wood-thrush mounted to a dead twig at the very top of a tall oak some distance below me, and poured forth his sad vesper hymn, so bewitchingly sweet and far-away; the while Kentucky warblers and cardinal grossbeaks piped their lullabies or madrigals, as they chose, from the darkling woods; and, altogether, it was a never-to-be-forgotten evening.
An early morning hour found me climbing the acclivity and mounting to the top of the hill. In a clover-field the gossamer Tse-e-e of the grasshopper sparrow, a birdlet among birds, pierced my ear. Presently a pair of these sparrows were seen on the fence-stakes, and, yes, one of them had a worm in its bill, indicating that there were little ones in the neighborhood. If I could find a grasshopper sparrows  nest! Often had I sought for one, but without success. For a long while my eyes followed the bird with the worm in her bill. Every now and then she would dart over into the grass as if to feed her bantlings, and I would mark the spot where she alighted; but when I went to it no nest or birdlings were to be found. Again and again I fairly trembled, thinking myself on the verge of a discovery, only to be balked completely in the end. But one victory was won; I got close enough to the bird to see distinctly with my glass the yellow markings on the edge of the wings,a characteristic I had never before been able to make out. Curiously enough, one wing of this bird was quite profusely tinged with yellow, while the yellow of the other could just be distinguished.
Why should not a bird-student frankly chronicle his failures as well as his successes? During the day I encountered three birds that I was unable to identify, try as I would. One was singing lustily in some tall trees, and when at length I got my glass upon him he looked like a Carolina wren; but that bird has been a familiar acquaintance for many years,comparatively speaking,and I have so often heard his varied roundels that they certainly are all known to me. Moreover, the quality of this mysterious singers voice and the manner of his execution were wholly different from those of the Carolina or any other wren of my acquaintance. The following is a transcription of the song as near as it could be represented by letters: Che-ha-p-e-e-r-r-r!  che-ha-p-e-e-r-r-r! repeated at brief intervals loudly and vigorously, but without variation. The bird had a white superciliary line, brownish-barred wings, and whitish under parts. A consultation of all the manuals in my possession fails to solve the problem.
In a deep gorge, cut through the country by a small creeksmall now, at leaston its way to the river, two curious bird calls were heard; but one bird kept himself hidden in a dense thicket, and the other bolted into the dark woods that covered a steep acclivity. The first bird sang rather than called, and the words he said sounded quite distinct: Che-o-wadell-wadell-chip!a sentiment that he repeated again and again.
In spite of these disappointments my jaunt through this ravine was exceedingly pleasant,so delightfully quiet and solitary; not a human sound to disturb the sacredness of the place; nothing but the songs and calls of wild birds.
Twas one of those charmed days
When the genius of God doth flow;
The wind may alter twenty ways,
A tempest cannot blow:
It may blow north, it still is warm;
Or south, it still is clear;
Or east, it smells like a clover-farm;
Or west, no thunder fear.
In one of the loneliest parts of the ravine there appeared on the scene my first Louisiana water-thrush, often called the large-billed wagtail. There it stood teetering on a spray or a rock, or skimming through the shallow water, its speckled breast  and olive back harmonizingI had almost said rhymingwith the gray of the creeks bed, the crystal of the water, and the green of the thicket-fringed banks. It was part and parcel of the scene,a lone bird in a lone place. But, hold! not lone, after all. Presently a young wagtail, the image of its mamma, emerged from somewhere or nowhere, and ran toward the old bird with open mouth, twinkling wings, and a pretty, coaxing call. She thrust something into its mouth; but still the bantling coaxed for more, when she dashed away a few feet, picked up another tidbit from the water, ran back to her little charge, and fed it again. But now, when it still pursued her, she seemed to lose her patience, for she rushed threateningly toward it, causing it to scamper away, and then she flew off. Yet after that she fed either the same or another youngster a number of times. Once a water-thrush went swinging down the gorge, the very poetry of graceful poise and movement, looking more like a naiad than a real flesh-and-blood birdlet.
On a horizontal branch extending out over the rippling stream, a wood-thrush sat on her mud cottage; but whether she appreciated the romantic character of the situation or not, she did not say. There were many other interesting feathered folk in the gorge and on its wooded steeps, each a brother of the dancing leaves; but to describe them all would take too long, and merely to name them would be too much like reciting a dry catalogue.

Since the foregoing observations

In Mr. Emersons poem entitled May Morning this stanza occurs:
When the purple flame shoots up,
And Love ascends the throne,
I cannot hear your songs, O birds,
For the witchery of my own.
It would seem, therefore, that to be a poet does not always give one the coign of vantage in observing Nature, but may, on the contrary, prove a positive disadvantage. Should the rambler go about crooning rhymes and making an over-sweet melody to himself, instead of keeping his ear alert to the music around him, he would be likely to miss many a wild, sweet song fully as enchanting as his own measured lines. No music of my own, however, diverted my mind from Natures blithe minstrels as, on the twenty-ninth of April, 1892, I pursued my avian studies in some of my favorite resorts.
It was nine oclock when I reached the quiet woodland lying beyond a couple of fields. The first fact noted was the return of a number of interesting migrants which had not been present  on the preceding day. They had, as is their wont, come by night from some more southern rendezvous. Among them was the oven-bird or accentor, announcing his presence with his startling song, which at first seemed to come from a distance, but gradually drew nearer, like a voice walking toward me as it grew louder and more accelerated. On account of this quaint ventriloquial quality of voice, the little vocalist is often very difficult to find, and you are sure to look in a dozen places before you at last descry him. What a sedate genius he is, as he sits atilt on a twig, or walks in his leisurely fashion on the leaf-carpeted ground, looking up at you at intervals out of his sage, beady eyes.
I have hinted that the oven-bird was first seen and then heard. In this respect the habits of different species of birds differ widely. The accentors, meadow-larks, orioles, bobolinks, Bewicks wrens, summer warblers, white-crowned sparrows, and some other species usually begin at once to celebrate with pæans their return to their old haunts; whereas the wood-thrushes, brown thrashers, and white-throated sparrows seem to wait several days after their arrival before they tune their harps,a diversity of behavior difficult to explain. Scarcely less inexplicable is the fact that some species arrive in scattered flocks, others in battalions and armies, and others still, one by one. My notes made on this day contain this statement: Yesterday I heard a single call of the red-headed woodpecker; to-day the woods are full of these birds.

On the first day of April the first Bewicks wren of the spring appeared, but, strange to say, not another wren was seen until near the end of the month. A single bird often goes ahead of the main body of migrants like a scout or outrider; while not infrequently a small company precedes the approaching army in the capacity, perhaps, of an advance guard.
Threading my way through the dim vistas, sprinkled oer with sun-flecked green, to an open space near the border of the woods, I had the opportunity of listening to an improvised cat-bird concert, without a cent of charge for admission. Here some mental notes were made on the vocal qualities of this bird in comparison with those of the celebrated brown thrasher, and with some hesitancy I give my conclusions. Each songster has his special points of excellence. The thrasher has more voice volume than his rival, his technique is better, he glides more smoothly from one part of his song to another, and executes several runs that for pure melody and skill in rendering go beyond the cat-birds ability; but, on the other hand, it must be said that the latter minstrels song contains fewer harsh, coarse, unmusical notes; his voice, on the whole, is of a finer quality, is pitched to a higher key, and his vocal performances are characterized by greater artlessness or naïveté. Though professing to be no connoisseur, I have never felt so deeply stirred by the thrashers as by the cat-birds minstrelsy. There does not seem to be so much  fervor and real passion in the vocal efforts of the tawny musician.
A little farther on, I again turned my steps into a dense section of the woods. Suddenly there was a twinkle of wings, a flash of olive-green, a sharp Chip, and then there before me, a few rods away, a little bird went hopping about on the ground, picking up dainties from the brown leaves. What could it be? Was I about to find a species that was new to me? It really seemed so. My opera-glass, when levelled upon the bird, revealed olive-green upper parts, yellow or buff under parts, and four black stripes on the head, two on the pileum and one through each eye. It was the rare worm-eating warbler (Helmitherus vermivorus) at last,a bird that had for many years eluded me. The little charmer was quite wary, chirping nervously while I ogled him,for it was a male,and then hopped up into a sapling, and finally scurried away out of sight.
A few steps farther on in the woods an extremely fine cat-like call swung down, like thread of sound, from the tree-tops. Of course, it was my tiny acquaintance the blue-gray gnat-catcher, and his pretty spouse, who had arrived, perhaps from Cuba or Guatemala, a few days before. What an immense distance for their frail little wings to traverse, through tracts and provinces of sky! You seldom see anything more dainty and dream-like than the fluttering of these birds from one tree-top to another, reminding you of an animated cloudlet hovering and darting about in mid-air. Not a more  fay-like bird visits my woodland than the blue-gray gnat-catcher. Even the ruby-throated hummingbird, though still smaller, seems rather roly-poly in comparison; and no warbler, not even the graceful redstart, can flit about so airily. One of the gnat-catchers in the tree-top presently darted out after a miller, which tried to escape by letting itself fall toward the ground. A vigorous drama followed. The bird plunged nimbly after, whirling round and round in a spiral course until it had secured its wriggling prize.
The gnat-catcher lisps a little song,a gossamer melody, it might be called. His slender voice has quite a resonant tang. On that day I did not take notes on his music, but the next day I had a good opportunity to do so; and I give the result, especially as no minute description of this birds song has been recorded, so far as I know. I had often heard it before, but had neglected to listen to it intently enough to analyze its peculiar quality. Bending my ear upon it, I distinctly and unmistakably detected, besides the birds own notes, the notes of three other birds,those of the cat-birds alarm-call, of the phbes song, and of the goldfinchs song and call. The imitation in each case was perfect, save that the gnat-catchers tones were slenderer than those of the birds whose music he had (if I may so speak) plagiarized. Is this tiny minstrel a mocker? Perhaps my description may be a surprise to many students of bird minstrelsy, but I can only say that, having listened to  the song for fully an hour, I could not well have been mistaken. Several times the reproduction of the goldfinchs song was so perfect that I looked the tree all over again and again with my glass for that bird, but goldfinches there were none about. Moreover, the gnat-catcher was in plain sight, dropping quite low in the tree part of the time; and there can be no doubt that every strain proceeded from his lyrical little throat.
The forenoon and part of the afternoon slipped away all too rapidly, bringing many valuable additions to my stock of bird lore; but I must pass others by to describe the most important find (to me) of this red-letter day in my experience. At about half-past four oclock I reached an old bush-covered gravel-bank where many birds of various species have been encountered. As I stepped near a pool at the foot of the bank, a little bird flashed into view, setting my pulses all a-flutter. It was the hooded warbler, the first of the species I had ever seen. He was recognizable at once by the bright yellow hood he wore, bordered all around with deep black. A bright, flitting blossom of the bird world!
For fully an hour I lingered in that embowered solitude, watching the birds quaint behavior, which deserves more than a mere passing notice. He was not in the least shy or nervous, but seemed rather to court my presence. Almost every moment was spent in capturing insects on the wing or in sitting on a perch watching for them to flash into view. Like a genuine flycatcher, as soon as a buzzing insect  hove in sight, he would dart out after it, and never once failed to secure his prize. Sometimes he would plunge swiftly downward after a gnat or a miller, and once, having caught a miller that was large and inclined to be refractory, he flew to the ground, beat it awhile on the clods, and then swallowed it with a consequential air which seemed to say, That is my way of disposing of such cases! Several times he mounted almost straight up from his perch, and twice he almost turned a somersault in pursuit of an insect. Once he clung like a titmouse to the bole of a sapling. I could often hear the snapping of his mandibles as he nabbed his prey. When an insect came between him and myself, he would fearlessly dash directly toward me, as if he meant to fly in my face or alight on my head, often coming within a few feet of me. He seemed to be as confiding as a child. When I stepped to the other end of the gravel-bank, going even a little beyond it, curiously enough, the bird pursued me; then, as an experiment, I walked back to my first post of observation, and, to my surprise, he followed me again. Was he really desirous of my company? Or did he know that I intended to ring his praises in type? At length I stole away a short distance among the trees, but presently a loud chirping in my rear arrested my attention. I turned back, and found it to be my new-made friend, the hooded warbler, who, strange to say, seemed to be calling me back to his haunt. Then I climbed to the top of the gravel-bank; he selected perches higher up in the saplings  than before, so as to be nearer me,at least, so it appeared. The affectionate little darling! The only other sound he uttered during the entire time of our hobnobbinghis and minewas the slenderest hint of a song, which was really more of a twitter than a tune.
But at last I bade the little sorcerer a reluctant adieu. In a hollow of the woods I lay down on the green grass, and listened for half an hour to the lyrical medley of a brown thrasher perched on a treetop. It was indeed a wonderful performance, and the longer I listened the more its witchery grew upon me. My special purpose in bending my whole attention upon this performance was to see if the thrasher mimicked the songs of other birds. Many persons think him a genuine imitator; indeed, in some places he is called the northern mocking-bird. I am forced to say, however, that, as far as my observation goes, he does not mimic, but sings his own compositions, like the original genius he is. In all that song, and others since listened to, not a single strain did he utter that I could positively identify as belonging to the musical repertoire of another bird. It is true, he sometimes, in the midst of his song, uttered the alarm call of the robin; but as both birds belong to the same family, this was not to be wondered at, and affords no evidence of the gift of imitation. If the thrasher does mimic his fellow-minstrels, as many persons contend, the borrowed notes are so brief and so intermingled and blent with his own music as to be unrecognizable.

On the other hand, this tawny vocalist utters musical strains that are entirely unlike anything else in the whole realm of bird minstrelsy, proving his song to be characteristic. The brown thrasher is not a musical pirate, but an original composer,a sort of Mozart or Beethoven in the bird world. And how wonderful are some of his slurred runs! Nothing in the domain of music could be finer, and the harsh notes he frequently interpolates only serve to accentuate and enhance the melody of those that are truly lyrical.
In his engaging book entitled Birds in the Bush, Bradford Torrey, who is second to none in the school of popular writers on feathered folk, characterizes this tawny vocalist in a most admirable manner. However, in regard to the matter of mimicry, his observations differ slightly from my own; yet I gladly quote what he says rather incidentally on the subject. One day he was listening to three thrashers singing simultaneously. In the midst of the hurly-burly, he writes, one of the trio suddenly sounded the whippoorwills call twice,an absolutely perfect reproduction. Then he adds, somewhat jocosely, in a foot-note: The authorities long since forbade Harporhynchus rufus to play the mimic. Probably in the excitement of the moment this fellow forgot himself. Of course, one cannot gainsay the testimony of so careful an observer and so conscientious a reporter as Mr. Torrey; yet it is possible that this whippoorwill call was only a slip of the thrashers voice and not an intended imitation; at all events,  in my opinion, such vocal coincidences, whether accidental or designed, are of rare occurrence.
Since the foregoing observations were made and first published, I have often sought to prove them untrue, but have failed. No thrasher has ever, in my hearing, unmistakably plagiarized a single strain from his fellow-musicians. Fearing my ear for music might be defective, rendering me incapable of distinguishing correctly the various songs of birds, I put myself to the test in this way: On one of the streets of my native town there is a brilliant mocking-bird, whose cage is often hung out on a veranda. Again and again I have stopped to listen to his ringing medley, and have never failed to hear him distinctly mimic the songs and calls of other birds, such as the robin, blue jay, cardinal grossbeak, and red-headed woodpecker. Why should I be able instantly to detect the notes of other birds in the mockers song and never once be able to detect them in the song of the thrasher?
But it is fully time to return to my ramble. The gifted songster in the tree-top would sometimes pipe a strain of such exquisite sweetness that it seemed to surprise himself; he would pause a moment, as if to reflect upon it and fix it in mind for future use; and erelong he would repeat it, reminding his admiring auditor of Brownings lines on the Wise Thrush,
He sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture.

New strains were continually introduced. So loud and full were some of his notes that the blue air trembled with his song, and the woods fairly woke into echoes. It is really doubtful if the disparaging term hurly-burly should be applied to such peerless vocalization. It was bird opera music of the highest style, improvised for the occasion, and formed a fitting conclusion to this rare birds gala-day.

The behavior of the mother

The night-hawk and the whippoorwill are often confounded by persons of inaccurate habits of observation. It is true, both birds are members of the goatsucker family; but they belong to entirely different genera, and are therefore of much more distant kin than many people suppose. The whippoorwill is a forest bird, while the night-hawk prefers the open country. Besides, the whippoorwill is decidedly nocturnal in his habits, making the woods ring at night, as every one knows, with his weird, flutelike melody; whereas the night-hawk is a bird of the day and evening. Then, a peculiar mark of the night-hawk is the round white spot on his wings, visible on the under surface as he performs his wonderful feats overhead,a mark that does not distinguish his woodland relative.
As a rule, the gloaming is the favorite time for the night-hawks wing-exercises; then he may be seen whirling, curveting, mounting, and plunging, often at a dizzy height, gathering his supper of insects as he flies; but his petulant call is often heard at other hours of the day, perhaps at noon when the sun is shining with fierce warmth. Even during a shower  he seems to be fond of haunting the cloudy canopy, toying with the wind.
His call, as he tilts overhead, is difficult to represent phonetically, both the vowels and consonants being provokingly elusive and hard to catch. To me he seems usually to say Spe-ah. Sometimes the S appears to be omitted, or is enunciated very slightly, while at other times his call seems to have a decidedly sibilant beginning. On several occasions he seemed to pronounce the syllable Scape.
I had often watched the marvellous flight of these birds, as they passed like living silhouettes across the sky; but they had always seemed so shy and unapproachable that, prior to the summer of 1891, I had despaired of ever finding a night-hawks nest. However, one evening in June, while stalking about in the marsh, I suddenly became aware of a large bird fluttering uneasily about me in the gathering darkness. Presently it was joined by its mate, and then the two birds circled and hovered about, often coming into uncomfortable proximity with my head, and muttering under their breath, Chuckle! chuckle! Several times one of them alighted for a few moments on the rail-fence near by, and then resumed its circular flight. Even in the darkness I recognized that my uncanny companions were night-hawks, and felt convinced that there must be a nest in the neighborhood, or they would not display so much anxiety. It was too late to discover their secret that evening, and, besides, I really felt a slight chill creeping up my back, with those dark, ghostly  forms wheeling about my head, and so I went reluctantly home.
Two days later I found time to visit the marsh. On reaching the spot where the two birds had been seen, presto! a dark feathered form started up before me from the ground. It was the female night-hawk; and there on the damp earth, without the least trace of a nest or a covering of any kind, lay two eggs. At last I had found a night-hawks nest! The ground-color of the eggs, which were quite large, was of a dirty bluish-gray cast, mottled and clouded with darker gray and brown.
The behavior of the mother bird was curious. She had fluttered away a few rods, pretending to be hurt, and then dropped into the grass. On my driving her from her hiding-place, she rose in the air and began to hover about above my head, and then, to my utter surprise, she swooped down toward me savagely, as if she really had a mind to attack me. As I walked away, she seemed to grow angrier and bolder, making a swift dash at me every few minutes, and actually coming so near my head as to cause me involuntarily to raise my cane in self-defence. A quaver of uneasiness went through me. I really believe she would have struck me had I given her sufficient provocation. There was a brisk shower falling at the time, and so, fearing the eggs might become addled, I hurried to the remote end of the marsh. Suddenly my feathered pursuer disappeared. Wondering if she had resumed her place on the nest, I sauntered back to settle the doubt, but presently  espied her sitting lengthwise on a top rail of the fence, while her eggs lay unprotected in the rain. Her dark, mottled form and sleepy, half-closed eyes made a quaint picture. I slowly withdrew, and as long as I could see her with my glass, she kept her perch on the rail without moving a pinion.
On the twenty-third of June another call was made on the night-hawk family, when I found two odd-looking bairns in the nest, if nest it could be called. They were covered with soft down, the black and white of which presented a wavy appearance. Their short, thick bills were covered with a speckled fuzz, except the tips. I stooped down and smoothed their downy backs with my hand, but there was no expression of fear in their sluggish eyes.
Both parents were present on the twenty-sixth of June. For a while the male bird pursued his mate savagely through the air, as if venting on her his anger at my intrusion, and then, mounting far up toward the sky and poising a moment, he plunged toward the earth with a velocity that made my head dizzy, checking himself, as is his wont, with a loud resounding Bo-o-m-m. The female again pursued her unwelcome visitor, swooping so near my head two or three times that I could have reached her with my cane. The cock bird, curiously enough, never displayed so much courage, but kept at a safe distance.
On the twenty-ninth the young birds had been moved about a half rod from the original site of the nest, and hopped off awkwardly into the grass when  I tried to clasp them with my hand. The benedict was absent this time, and was never seen on any of my subsequent visits while the young birds were fledging. By the first of July the bantlings hopped about in a lively manner at my approach to their domicile, and wheezed in a frightened way, spreading out their mottled pinions. On the seventh of July neither of the parents was to be seen, and the youngsters sat so cosily side by side on the ground that I had not the heart to disturb their slumbers. Approaching cautiously on the tenth, I almost stepped on the mother bird before she flew up. At the same moment both young birds started from the ground, and fluttered away in different directions on their untried wings, their flight being awkward and labored. A few weeks later four night-hawks were circling about above the marsh,no doubt the family that had been affording me such an interesting study. What was my surprise when one of them resented my presence by swooping down toward me, as the female had done a few weeks before!
Reference has already been made incidentally to the night-hawks curious habit of booming, as it is called. This sound is always produced as he plunges in an almost perpendicular course from a dizzy height,or, more correctly, at the end of that headlong plunge, just as he sweeps around in a graceful curve. There is something almost sepulchral about the reverberating sound. How it is produced is a problem over which there has been no small amount of discussion in ornithological circles. But after  considerable study of this queer performance, I am persuaded that it is a vocal outburst, produced either for its musical effect (though it is far from musical), or else to give vent to the birds exuberance of feeling as he makes his swift descent.
His thick, curved bill seems admirably adapted to produce this sound, as do also his arched throat and neck. It has seemed to me, too, that his mandibles fly open at the moment the boom is heard, although I cannot be sure such is the case. Besides, the peculiar chuckle, previously referred to, had about it a quality of sound suggestive of kinship with the birds resounding boom. The hollow, wheezy alarm-call of the young birds, heard on several of my visits to the nest in the marsh, corroborates this theory. But there is still further proof that this hypothesis is correct. The night-hawk often makes his headlong plunge without booming at all, but merely utters his ordinary rasping, aerial call, which has been translated by the syllable Spe-ah. Then he sometimes combines the two calls, and on such occasions both of the sounds are uttered with a diminished loudness, as one would expect if both are vocal performances, but as one would not expect if the booming were made by the concussion of the birds wings with the resisting air, as some ornithologists suppose. The female sometimes booms, but her voice obviously lacks the strong, resounding quality that characterizes the voice of her liege lord.

The same old traditional notes

Almost every person living in the country or the suburbs of a town is familiar with the house-pewee, or phbe-bird. It is usually looked upon as the sure harbinger of spring. In my boyhood days my parents and grandparents were wont to say, Spring is here; the phbe is singing. And if blithesomeness of tone and good cheer have anything to do with the advent of the season of song and bursting blossoms, the pewit, as he is often called, must be a true herald and prophet. He seems to carry the subtle essence of spring in his tuneful larynx, and in the graceful sweep of his flight as he pounces upon an insect. It is quite easy to make the transition from his familiar song of Phe-e-by to the exclamation, Springs here! by a little stretch of the fancy.
But the phbe has a woodland relative, a first cousin, with which most persons are not so well acquainted, because he is more retiring in his habits, and seeks out-of-the-way places for his habitat. I refer to the wood-pewee. If your eyes and ears are not so sharp as they should be, you may get these  two birds confounded; yet there is no need of making such a blunder. The woodland bird is smaller, slenderer, and of a darker cast than his relative; and, besides, there is a marked difference in the musical performances of these birds. The song of the phbe is sprightly and cheerful, and the syllables are uttered rather quickly, while the whistle of the wood-pewee is softer and more plaintive, and is repeated with less emphasis and more deliberation. There is, indeed, something inexpressibly sad and dreamy about the strain of the wood-pewee, especially if heard at a distance in the emerald twilight of the woodland privacies. Mr. Lowell seldom erred in his attempts to characterize the songs and habits of the birds, but in his exquisite poem entitled Phbe he certainly must have referred to the wood-pewee and not to the phbe-bird, as his description applies to the former but not to the latter. He calls this bird the loneliest of its kind, while the pewit is a familiar species about many a country home. Taking it for granted that he meant the wood-pewee, how happy is his description!
It is a wee sad-colored thing,
As shy and secret as a maid;
That ere in choir the robins ring,
Pipes its own name like one afraid.
It seems pain-prompted to repeat
The story of some ancient ill,
But Phbe! Phbe! sadly sweet,
Is all it says, and then is still.
· · · · · · ·

“Phbe! it calls and calls again;
And Ovid, could he but have heard,
Had hung a legendary pain
About the memory of the bird.
· · · · · · ·
“Phbe! is all it has to say
In plaintive cadence oer and oer,
Like children who have lost their way,
And know their names, but nothing more.
This poetical tribute is certainly very graceful, and would be true to life if the phonetic representation were a little more accurate. Instead of Phbe, imagine the song to be Pe-e-w-e-e-e or Phe-e-w-e-e-e, and you will gain a clear idea of the minstrelsy of this songster of the wildwood. However, he frequently varies his tune,to prevent its becoming monotonous, I opine. He sometimes closes his refrain with the falling inflection or circumflex, and sometimes with the rising, as the mood prompts him. In the former case the first syllable receives the greater emphasis and is the more prolonged, and in the latter this order is precisely reversed. When the last syllable is uttered with the rising circumflex, it is usually, if not always, cut off somewhat abruptly. Moreover, this minstrel often runs the two syllables of his song together,a peculiarity that I have represented in my notes, taken while listening to the song, in this way: Phe-e-e-o-o-w-e-e-e! There is a characteristic swing about the melody that refuses to be caught in the mesh of letters and syllables.
In some of the pewees vocal efforts he does not  get farther than the end of the first syllable. The song seems to be cut off short, as if the notes had stuck fast in the singers throat, or as if something had occurred to divert his mind from the song. Perhaps this hiatus is caused by the sudden appearance of an insect glancing by, which attracts the musicians attention. This bird usually chooses a dead twig or limb in the woods as a perch, on which he sits and sings, turning his head from side to side, so that no flitting moth may escape him.
And what a persistent singer he is! He sings not only in the spring when other vocalists are in full tune, but also all summer long, never growing disheartened, even when the mercury rises far up into the nineties. What a pleasant companion he has been in my midsummer strolls as I have wearily patrolled the woods! On the sultriest August days, when all other birds were glad to keep mute, sitting on their shady perches with open mandibles and drooping wings, the dreamful, far-away strain of the wood-pewee has drifted, a welcome sound, to my ears through the dim aisles. He seems to be a friend in need. How often, when the heat has almost overcome me, as I pursued my daily beat, that song has put new vigor into my veins! When Mr. Lowell wrote that
The phbe scarce whistles
Once an hour to his fellow,
he must have been listening to a far lazier specimen than those with which I am acquainted.

Most birds fall occasionally into a kind of ecstasy of song, and the wood-pewee is no exception. One evening, after it had grown almost dark, a pewee flew out into the air directly above my head from a tree by the wayside, and began to sing in a perfect transport as he wheeled about; then he swung back into the tree, keeping up his song in a continuous strain, and in sweet, half-caressing tones, until finally it died away, as if the bird had fallen into a doze during his vocal recital. I lingered about for some time, but he did not sing again. Why should he repeat his good-night song?
I have frequently heard young pewees in midsummer singing in a continuous way, instead of whistling the intermittent song of their elders. It sounds very droll, giving you the impression that the little neophyte has begun to turn the crank of his music-box and cant stop. His voice is quite sweet, but his execution is very crude. Wait, however, until he is eight or nine months older, and he will show you what a winged Orpheus can do. My notes say that on the thirtieth of July, 1891, I heard a pewees quaint, prolonged whistle, interlarded with his ordinary notes. Thus it will be seen that he is a somewhat versatile songster, proving the poets lines half true and half untrue:
The birds but repeat without ending
The same old traditional notes,
Which some, by more happily blending,
Seem to make over new in their throats.

Younger readers may, perhaps, need to be informed that the wood-pewee belongs to the family of flycatchers, as do also the king-bird or bee-martin, the phbe-bird, the great-crested flycatcher, and a number of other interesting species, all of which have a peculiar way of taking their prey. The pewee will sit almost motionless on a twig, lisping his plaintive tune at intervals, until a luckless insect comes buzzing near, all unconscious of its peril, when the bird will make a quick dash at it, seize it dexterously between his mandibles, and then circle around gracefully to the same or another perch, having made a splendid catch on the fly. If the quarry he has taken is small, it slips at once down his throat; but should it be too large to be disposed of in that summary way, he will beat it into an edible form upon a limb before gulping it down. Agile as he is, he sometimes misses his aim, being compelled to make a second, and occasionally even a third attempt to secure his prize. I have witnessed more than one comedy which turned out to be a tragedy for the ill-starred insect. Sometimes the insect will resort to the ruse of dropping toward the ground when it sees the bird darting toward it, and then a scuffle ensues that is really laughable, the pursuer whirling, tumbling, almost turning somersault in his desperate efforts to capture his prize. Once an insect flew between me and a pewee perched on a twig, when the bird darted down toward me with a directness of aim that made me think for a  moment he would fly right into my face; but he made a dexterous turn in time, caught his quarry, and swung to a bough near by. If one were disposed to be speculative, one might well raise Sidney Laniers pregnant inquiry at this point, the reference being to the southern mocking-bird, and not to our pewee,
How may the death of that dull insect be
The life of yon trim Shakspeare, on the tree?
It has been my good fortune to find one, but only one, nest of this bird. It was placed on a horizontal branch about fifteen feet above the ground, and was a neat, compact structure, decorated on the outside with grayish lichens and moss, giving it the appearance of an excrescence on the limb.[6] It is said by those who have closely examined the nests, that they are handsomely built and ornamented, and are equalled only by the dainty houses of the humming-bird and the blue-gray gnat-catcher. The eggs, usually four in number, are of a creamy white hue, beautifully embellished with a wreath of lavender and purplish-brown around the larger end or near the centre.
Though our bird prefers solitary places for his home, he is far from shy, if you call on him in his haunt in the wildwood. He will sit fearless on his perch, even if you come quite near, looking at  you in his staid, philosophical way, as if you were scarcely worth noticing. Nor will he hush his song at your approach, although he does not seem to care whether you listen to him or not. It is seldom that he can be betrayed into doing an undignified act; and even if he does almost turn a somersault in pursuing a refractory miller, he recovers his poise the next moment, and settles upon his perch with as much sang froid as if nothing unusual had occurred. Altogether, the wood-pewee is what Bradford Torrey would call a character in feathers.