Yankee stranger what mocking-birds could
really do when they set out. He did his work well; the love notes of the
flicker could not have been improved by the flicker himself; but, right
or wrong, I could not help feeling that the cardinal struck a truer and
deeper note; while both together did not hinder me from hearing the
faint songs of grasshopper sparrows rising from the ground on either
side of the lane. It was a fine contrast: the mocker flooding the air
from the topmost bough, and the sparrows whispering their few almost
inaudible notes out of the grass. Yes, and at the self-same moment the
eye also had its contrast; for a marsh hawk was skimming over the field,
while up in the sky soared a pair of hen-hawks.

In the wood, composed of large trees, both hard wood and pine, I had
found a group of three summer tanagers, two males and one female,--the
usual proportion with birds generally, one may almost say, in the
pairing season. The female was the first of her sex that I had seen, and
I remarked with pleasure the comparative brightness of her dress. Among
tanagers, as among negroes, red and yellow are esteemed a pretty good
match. At this point, too, in a cluster of pines, I caught a new
song--faint and listless, like the indigo-bird's, I thought; and at the
word I started forward eagerly. Here, doubtless, was the indigo-bird's
southern congener, the nonpareil, or painted bunting, a beauty which I
had begun to fear I was to miss. I had recognized my first tanager from
afar, ten days before, his voice and theme were so like his Northern
relative's; but this time I was too hasty. My listless singer was not
the nonpareil, nor even a finch of any kind, but a yellow-throated
warbler. For a month I had seen birds of his species almost daily, but
always in hard wood trees, and silent. Henceforth, as long as I remained
in Florida, they were invariably in pines,--their summer quarters,--and
in free song. Their plumage is of the neatest and most exquisite; few,
even among warblers, surpass them in that regard: black and white
(reminding one of the black-and-white creeper, which they resemble also
in their feeding habits), with a splendid yellow gorget. Myrtle warblers
(yellow-rumps) were still here (the peninsula is alive with them in the
winter), and a ruby-crowned kinglet mingled its lovely voice with the
simple trills of pine warblers, while out of a dense low treetop some
invisible singer was pouring a stream of fine-sp