seat myself, with opera glass, at the wide-open window.

My first discovery made, however, during the blackbird reign, was that
four o'clock is the most lovely part of the day. All the dust of human
affairs having settled during the hours of sleep, the air is fresh and
sweet, as if just made; and generally, just before sunrise, the foliage
is at perfect rest,--the repose of night still lingering, the world of
nature as well as of men still sleeping.

The first thing one naturally looks for, as birds begin to waken, is a
morning chorus of song. True bird-lovers, indeed, long for it with a
longing that cannot be told. But alas, every year the chorus is
withdrawing more and more to the woods, every year it is harder to find
a place where English sparrows are not in possession; and it is one of
the most grievous sins of that bird that he spoils the song, even when
he does not succeed in driving out the singer. A running accompaniment
of harsh and interminable squawks overpowers the music of meadow-lark
and robin, and the glorious song of the thrush is fairly murdered by it.
One could almost forgive the sparrow his other crimes, if he would only
lie abed in the morning; if he would occasionally listen, and not
forever break the peace of the opening day with his vulgar brawling. But
the subject of English sparrows is maddening to a lover of native birds;
let us not defile the magic hour by considering it.

The most obvious resident of the neighborhood, at four o'clock in the
morning, was always the golden-winged woodpecker, or flicker. Though he
scorned the breakfast I offered, having no vegetarian proclivities, he
did not refuse me his presence. I found him a character, and an amusing
study, and I never saw his tribe so numerous and so much at home.

Though largest in size of my four o'clock birds, and most fully
represented (always excepting the English sparrows), the golden-wing was
not in command. The autocrat of the hour, the reigning power, was quite
a different personage, although belonging to the woodpecker family. It
was a red-headed woodpecker who assumed to own the lawn and be master of
the feast. This individual was marked by a defect in plumage, and had
been a regular caller since the morning of my arrival. During the
blackbird supremacy over the corn supply he had been hardly more than a
spectator, coming to the trunk of the elm and surveying the assembly of
blue jays, doves, blackbirds, and sparrows with in