pecies which arrived late in March become more
numerous, and to them are soon added the Vesper, Savannah, and Chipping
Sparrows, and other seed-eaters; and when, with increasing warmth,
insects appear, the pioneer Phoebe is followed by other insect-eating
birds, like the Swallows, Pipit, Hermit Thrush, Myrtle and Palm
Warblers, Louisiana Water-thrush and Ruby-crowned Kinglet.

The true bird student will now pass every available moment afield,
eagerly watching for the return of old friends and more eagerly still
for possible new ones. But enjoyment of this yearly miracle should not
be left only to the initiated. We need not be ornithologists to be
thrilled when the Robin's song in March awakes long silent echoes, or
the Thrasher's solo rings loud and clear on an April morning. The
Catbird singing from near his last year's home in the thickening
shrubbery, the House Wren whose music bubbles over between bustling
visits to an oft-used bird-box, the Chimney Swift twittering cheerily
from an evening sky, may be heard without even the effort of listening
and each one, with a hundred others, brings us a message if we will but
accept it. And I make no fanciful statement when I say that it is a
message we can ill afford to lose.

[Illustration: "RED-WINGS WITH SCARLET EPAULETS GO TROOPING BY"]

With May come the Thrushes--Wood Thrush, Veery, Olive-back and
Gray-cheek, the last two en route to the north--the Orioles, Cuckoos,
Vireos, and the Bobolink who began his four thousand mile journey from
northern Argentina in March. But May is preeminently the Month of
Warblers, "most beautiful, most abundant, and least known" of our birds.
To the eight species which have already arrived, there may be added over
twenty more, represented by a number of individuals beyond our power to
estimate. We may hear the Robin, Thrasher, and Wren, without listening,
but we will see few Warblers without looking; and this, in a measure,
accounts for the fascination which attends their study.

After May 15 there is an evident thinning in the ranks of the migrating
army, and by June 1 we shall see only a few stragglers. The Transient
Visitors will have gone to their more northern homes and our bird
population will then consist only of the ever present Permanent
Residents and the Summer Residents which the great northward march of
the birds has brought us from the South.

Although June may be called the Month of Nests, nest-building begins
long before