The Spring of the Year

ll I urge you to see? Why the twelve, of course, that I always look

thing very wonderful and important. And so it is; for the sight of the first March bluebird is the last sight of winter and the first sight of spring. The brown of

ck so early? Guess at it. What does he say as he calls to you? Lis

h its tiny but perfect flowers. Now wait a minute. The woods are still bare; ice may still be found on the northern slopes, while here before you, like a wedge splitting the frozen soil, like a spear cleaving through the earth from the other, the summer,

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ht they are upon a snow-covered field! For often after their return it will snow again, when the brill

ll birds in the bushes at your side, in the tall trees over your head-everywhere! It is the warblers. You are in the tide of the tiny migrants-yellow warblers, pine

should see with your own eyes under some deep, dark forest trees the blue hepatica and on some bushy hillside the pink arbutus. (For f

t sand along the margin of a pond or out in some cultivated field; thirdly, the nest of a sun-fish (pumpkin-seed) in the shallow water close up along the sandy shore of the pond; and fourthly, the nest of the red squirrel, made of fine stripped cedar bark

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of the hardest things that you will try to do this spring will be to see the shrill little piper, as he plays his bagpipe in the ru

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d with quite the glory, with quite the music, with quite the sweet fragrance, with quite the wonder of a morning in May

behind after worms; the rip of the ploughshare; the roll of the soil from the smooth mould-board-the wealth of it all.

-but in "The Fall of the Year" I ask you to go once more and see that field all covered with shocks of ripened corn, shocks t

hy does this bird always use a snake-skin in his nest? and why does he usually leave it hanging loose outside the hole? Questions, these, for you

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see. This is because they cannot look hard and steadily at anything. The first great help to real seeing is to go into the woods knowing what you hope to see-seeing it in your eye, as we say, before you see it in the out-of-doors. No one would ever see a tree-toad on a mossy tree or a whip-poor-will among the fallen leaves who did not hav