autifully. From the Great
Crested to the Little Green Flycatcher, their ways and general habits
are the same. Slow in flying from point to point, they yet have a
wonderful quickness, and snap up the fleetest insects with little
apparent effort. There is a constant play of quick, nervous movements
underneath their outer show of calmness and stolidity. They do not scour
the limbs and trees like the Warblers, but, perched upon the middle
branches, wait like true hunters for the game to come along. There is
often a very audible snap of the beak as they arrest their prey.

The Wood-Pewee, the prevailing species in this locality, arrests your
attention by his sweet, pathetic cry. There is room for it also in the
deep woods, as well as for the more prolonged and elevated strains. His
mate builds an exquisite nest of moss on the side of some shelving cliff
or overhanging rock. The other day, passing by a ledge near the top of a
mountain in a singularly desolate locality, my eye rested upon one of
these structures, looking precisely as if it grew there, so in keeping
was it with the mossy character of the rock; and I have had a growing
affection for the bird ever since. The rock seemed to love the nest and
to claim it as its own. I said, What a lesson in architecture is here!
Here is a house that was built, but built with such loving care and such
beautiful adaptation of the means to the end, that it looks like a
product of nature. The same wise economy is noticeable in the nests of
all birds. No bird would paint its house white or red, or add aught for
show.

Coming to a drier and less mossy place in the woods, I am amused with
the Golden-crowned Thrush,--which, however, is no thrush at all, but a
Warbler, the _Sciurus aurocapillus_. He walks on the ground ahead of me
with such an easy gliding motion, and with such an unconscious,
preoccupied air, jerking his head like a hen or a partridge, now
hurrying, now slackening his pace, that I pause to observe him. If I sit
down, he pauses to observe me, and extends his pretty ramblings on all
sides, apparently very much engrossed with his own affairs, but never
losing sight of me. But few of the birds are walkers, most being
hoppers, like the Robin. I recall only five species of the former among
our ordinary birds,--the one in question, the Meadow-Lark, the Tit-Lark,
the Cow-Bunting, and the Water-Wagtail (a relative of the Golden-Crown).

Satisfied that I have no hostile intentions