o wash myself, a purple finch flew up before me, having already
performed its ablutions. I had first observed this bird the winter
before in the Highlands of the Hudson, where, during several clear but
cold February mornings, a troop of them sang most charmingly in a tree
in front of my house. The meeting with the bird here in its breeding
haunts was a pleasant surprise. During the day I observed several pine
finches,--a dark brown or brindlish bird, allied to the common
yellowbird, which it much resembles in its manner and habits. They
lingered familiarly about the house, sometimes alighting in a small
tree within a few feet of it. In one of the stumpy fields I saw an old
favorite in the grass finch or vesper swallow. It was sitting on a
tall charred stub with food in its beak. But all along the borders of
the woods and in the bushy parts of the fields there was a new song
that I was puzzled in tracing to the author. It was most noticeable in
the morning and at twilight, but was at all times singularly secret
and elusive. I at last discovered that it was the white-throated
sparrow, a common bird all through this region. Its song is very
delicate and plaintive,--a thin, wavering, tremulous whistle, which
disappoints one, however, as it ends when it seems only to have begun.
If the bird could give us the finishing strain of which this seems
only the prelude, it would stand first among feathered songsters.

By a little trout brook in a low part of the woods adjoining the
clearing, I had a good time pursuing and identifying a number of
warblers,--the speckled Canada, the black-throated blue, the
yellow-rumped, and Audubon's warbler. The latter, which was leading
its troop of young through a thick undergrowth on the banks of the
creek where insects were plentiful, was new to me.

It being August, the birds were all moulting, and sang only fitfully
and by brief snatches. I remember hearing but one robin during the
whole trip. This was by the Boreas River in the deep forest. It was
like the voice of an old friend speaking my name.

From Hewett's, after engaging his youngest son,--the "Bub" of the
family,--a young man about twenty and a thorough woodsman, as our
guide, we took to the woods in good earnest, our destination being the
Stillwater of the Boreas,--a long, deep, dark reach in one of the
remotest branches of the Hudson, about six miles distant. Here we
paused a couple of days, putting up in a dilapidated lumbermen's