arm weather, and may be found living their slow, sluggish life
until late in the fall. In eggs, cocoons, discarded bird's-nests, in
earthen burrows, or in the mud at the bottom of pond or stream, all these
creatures have spent the winter near where we find them in the spring. But
birds are like creatures of another world; and, although in every summer's
walk we may see turtles, birds, butterflies, and chipmunks, all
interweaving their life paths across one another's haunts, yet the power
of extended flight and the wonderful habit of continental migration set
birds apart from all other living creatures. A bird during its lifetime
has almost twice the conscious existence of, say, a snake or any
hibernating mammal. And now in early May, when the creatures of the woods
and fields have only recently opened their sleepy eyes and stretched their
thin forms, there comes the great worldwide army of the birds, whose
bright eyes peer at us from tree, thicket, and field, whose brilliant
feathers and sweet songs bring summer with a leap--the height of the grand
symphony, of which the vernal peeping of the frogs and the squirrels'
chatter were only the first notes of the prelude.

Tantalus-like is the condition of the amateur bird-lover, who, book in
hand, vainly endeavours to identify the countless beautiful forms which
appear in such vast numbers, linger a few days and then disappear, passing
on to the northward, but leaving behind a goodly assemblage which spends
the summer and gives abundant opportunity for study during the succeeding
months. In May it is the migrants which we should watch, and listen to,
and "ogle" with our opera glasses. Like many other evanescent things,
those birds which have made their winter home in Central America--land yet
beyond our travels--and which use our groves merely as half-way houses on
their journey to the land of their birth, the balsams of Quebec, or the
unknown wastes of Labrador, seem most precious, most worthy at this time
of our closest observation.

More confusing--albeit the more delightful--is a season when continued
cold weather and chilly rains hold back all but the hardiest birds,
until--like the dammed-up piles of logs trembling with the spring
freshets--the tropic winds carry all before them, and all at once winter
birds which have sojourned only a few miles south of us, summer residents
which should have appeared weeks ago, together with the great host of
Canadian and other nester