build and walk and flight of the quail and the grouse. It gets up before
you in much the same manner, and falls an easy prey to the crack shot.
Its yellow breast, surmounted by a black crescent, it need not be
ashamed to turn to the morning sun, while its coat of mottled gray is
in perfect keeping with the stubble amid which it walks. The two lateral
white quills in its tail seem strictly in character. These quills spring
from a dash of scorn and defiance in the bird's make-up. By the aid
of these, it can almost emit a flash as it struts about the fields and
jerks out its sharp notes. They give a rayed, a definite and piquant
expression to its movements. This bird is not properly a lark, but a
starling, say the ornithologists, though it is lark-like in its habits,
being a walker and entirely a ground-bird. Its color also allies it to
the true lark. I believe there is no bird in the English or European
fields that answers to this hardy pedestrian of our meadows. He is a
true American, and his note one of our characteristic April sounds.

Another marked April note, proceeding sometimes from the meadows, but
more frequently from the rough pastures and borders of the woods, is
the call of the high-hole, or golden-shafted woodpecker. It is quite as
strong as that of the meadowlark, but not so long-drawn and piercing.
It is a succession of short notes rapidly uttered, as if the bird said
_"if-if-if-if-if-if-if."_ The notes of the ordinary downy and hairy
woodpeckers suggest, in some way, the sound of a steel punch; but
that of the high-hole is much softer, and strikes on the ear with real
springtime melody. The high-hole is not so much a wood-pecker as he is
a ground-pecker. He subsists largely on ants and crickets, and does not
appear till they are to be found.

In Solomon's description of spring, the voice of the turtle is
prominent, but our turtle, or mourning dove, though it arrives in April,
can hardly be said to contribute noticeably to the open-air sounds.
Its call is so vague, and soft, and mournful,--in fact, so remote and
diffused,--that few persons ever hear it at all.

Such songsters as the cow blackbird are noticeable at this season,
though they take a back seat a little later. It utters a peculiarly
liquid April sound. Indeed, one would think its crop was full of water,
its notes so bubble up and regurgitate, and are delivered with such
an apparent stomachic contraction. This bird is the only feathered
polygam