The Spring of the Year

s that later on in the summer you will find in the woods. Then, as the spring advances and this silvery sleigh-bell jingle tinkles faster, other voices will join in-the soft croak of the spot

g to you. After the thrush (2) the brown thrasher, our finest, most gifted songster, as great a singer, I think (and I have often heard them both), as the Southern mockingbird. Then (3) the operatic catbird. She sits lower down among the bushes than the brown thrasher, as if she knew that, compared with him, she must take a back seat; but for variety of notes and length of song, she has few rivals. I s

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f bones" or heave an anchor and let the chain run fast through the hawse-hole. You then must hear the downy woodpecker doing his rattling rat-ta-tat-tat-tat-tat (across the page

ust hear him yell, Up-up-up-up-up up-up-up-up-up-up,-a ringing,

to be heard at twilight, and the whip-poor-will far into the nigh

and on half-closed wings dive headlong toward the earth, when, just before hitting the ground, upward he swoops, at the same instant making a weird booming sound, a kind of hollow groan with his wings, as the wind r

spring into the air, like a strange shadow, for flies; count his whip-poor-wills (he may call it more than a hundred times

e of your outdoor tasks or feats: you must hear the mating song of the woodcock. I have described the song and the dance in "Roof and Meadow," in the chapter called "One Flew East and One Flew West." Mr. Bradford Torrey has an acc

, along the bank of the meadow stream, wait in the chilly twilight for the speank, sp

g. You will surely think something is being murdered. The crying of a hungry baby is musical in comparison. But it is a good sound to hear, for it reminds one of

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ng of the excited bees. But hear their myriad wings, fanning the perfume into the air and filling the sunshine with the music of work. The whir, the hum of labor-of a busy factory, of a great steamship dock-is always music to those who know the blessedness of w

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ut alone one of these April nights; select a green pasture with a slope to the south, at least a mile from any house, or railroad; lay your ear flat upon the grass, listen without a move for ten minutes. You hear something-or do you feel it? Is it the reaching up of the

nderful wings. Don't be frightened. It isn't Santa Claus this time of year; nor is it the Old Nick! The smothered thunder is caused by the rapid beating of the swallows' wings on the air in the narrow chimney-

id songs are as fresh as the shower, as if the raindrops in falling were running down from the trees in song-as indeed they are in the overflowing trout-

in drops as

rain the

reek in twos

swifts and s

sweet with

e laid dust

's marge o

he robins i

time of blo

days of t

warm, the swe

s singing