e yellow-rumped, who came on the 23d; and the yellow red-polls,
who followed the next morning. The black-throated greens were
mysteriously tardy, and the black-and-white creepers waited for May-day.

A single brown thrush was leading the chorus on the 29th. "A great
singer," my note-book says: "not so altogether faultless as some, but
with a large voice and style, adapted to a great part;" and then is
added, "I thought this morning of Titiens, as I listened to him!"--a bit
of impromptu musical criticism, which, under cover of the saving
quotation marks may stand for what it is worth.

Not long after leaving him I ran upon two hermit thrushes (one had been
seen on the 25th), flitting about the woods like ghosts. I whistled
softly to the first, and he condescended to answer with a low _chuck_,
after which I could get nothing more out of him. This demure taciturnity
is very curious and characteristic, and to me very engaging. The fellow
will neither skulk nor run, but hops upon some low branch, and looks at
you,--behaving not a little as if you were the specimen and he the
student! And in such a case, as far as I can see, the bird equally with
the man has a right to his own point of view.

The hermits were not yet in tune; and without forgetting the fox-colored
sparrows and the linnets, the song sparrows and the bay-wings, the
winter wrens and the brown thrush, I am almost ready to declare that the
best music of the month came from the smallest of all the month's birds,
the ruby-crowned kinglets. Their spring season is always short with us,
and unhappily it was this year shorter even than usual, my dates being
April 23d and May 5th. But we must be thankful for a little, when the
little is of such a quality. Once I descried two of them in the topmost
branches of a clump of tall maples. For a long time they fed in silence;
then they began to chase each other about through the trees, in graceful
evolutions (I can imagine nothing more graceful), and soon one, and
then the other, broke out into song. "'Infinite riches in a little
room,'" my note-book says, again; and truly the song is marvelous,--a
prolonged and varied warble, introduced and often broken into, with
delightful effect, by a wrennish chatter. For fluency, smoothness, and
ease, and especially for purity and sweetness of tone, I have never
heard any bird-song that seemed to me more nearly perfect. If the dainty
creature would bear confinement,--on which point I kno