CHIPMUNKS, BLUEBIRDS, AND ROBINS
The season was opened, formally, on the
10th of March. I am speaking for myself.
Friday, the 8th, brought genuine spring
weather, sunny and warm, an ideal day for
the first bluebird; but I was obliged to
waste it in the city. The 9th was rainy
and cold, and though I spent some hours
out of doors, I saw no vernal signs. Birds
of all sorts were never so few. The next
morning—cloudy, with a raw northeasterly
wind—I was fifteen minutes away from
home when a squirrel came out of the woods
on one side of the way and ran across the
road before me. It was a chipmunk, my
first one of the new year, wide-awake and
quick on its legs; and it was hardly in the
hazel bushes on the other side of the road
before another joined it, and the two chased
each other out of sight. Spring had come.