SPRING SONG.
If you are ready for this quest when the sun crosses the equinox the 21. of March, you will be in good time, and your labours will be lightened by studying the birds as they come one by one, hearing each voice in a solo, before all have gathered in late May and individual notes blend in the chorus. In this locality there is very little general upward movement before the vernal equinox, for the weather is too capricious. A few Song Sparrows and Bluebirds begin to sing, but the Yellowbirds that have wintered with us are still wearing their old coats, and have not broken into song. Last spring (1894) I noted in my diary the return of the Song Sparrows March 5, but the flocks of Bluebirds and Robins did not come until the 13. When a flock of a hundred or more Fox Sparrows also arrived, and the White-throated Sparrows followed them.
The birds oftentimes arrive singly or by twos or threes, and then again suddenly in great flocks. One afternoon there may not be a White-throat in sight, the next morning they will be feeding upon the ground like a drift of brown leaves. Almost all birds migrate at night, and every dawn will show you some new arrival, pluming and drying his feathers in the first rays of the sun. Birds who depend upon insect diet, like the Phoebe, the commonest of the fly—catchers, may arrive too soon, before insect life has quickened, and suffer much through their miscalculation. Often the appearance of individuals of a species does not indicate the beginning of the general return, as they may be birds that have not gone far away, but have merely been roving about all Winter.
From the last of March until the first of June the spring migration is in full swing, some of the earlier birds to arrive will have passed on, before the Tanagers and Black-polls, and other late Warblers, appear. The last week of May the Spring Song is at its height; let us look at the order in which the singers begin and end their daily music.
You must be up in the long twilight that precedes dawn, if you wish to hear the little precentor—the Chipping Sparrow—give the signal on his shrill pitch pipe. Then
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