stake so narrow
that there was scarcely room for their feet; and as they stood thus,
side by side, one of them struck its beak several times against the beak
of the other, as if in play. I wished them joy of their expected
progeny, and was the more ready to believe they would have it for this
little display of sportive sentimentality.

It was a distinguished company that frequented that row of narrow back
yards on the edge of the sand-hills. As a new-comer, I found the jays
(sometimes there were ten under my eye at once) the most entertaining
members of it, but if I had been a dweller there for the summer, I
should perhaps have altered my opinion; for the group contained four of
the finest of Floridian songsters,--the mocking-bird, the brown
thrasher, the cardinal grosbeak, and the Carolina wren. Rare morning and
evening concerts those cottagers must have. And besides these there were
catbirds, ground doves, red-eyed chewinks, white-eyed chewinks, a song
sparrow (one of the few that I saw in Florida), savanna sparrows, myrtle
birds, redpoll warblers, a phoebe, and two flickers. The last-named
birds, by the way, are never backward about displaying their tender
feelings. A treetop flirtation is their special delight (I hope my
readers have all seen one; few things of the sort are better worth
looking at), and here, in the absence of trees, they had taken to the
ridgepole of a house.

More than once I remarked white-breasted swallows straggling northward
along the line of sand-hills. They were in loose order, but the movement
was plainly concerted, with all the look of a vernal migration. This
swallow, the first of its family to arrive in New England, remains in
Florida throughout the winter, but is known also to go as far south as
Central America. The purple martins--which, so far as I am aware, do not
winter in Florida--had already begun to make their appearance. While
crossing the bridge, February 22, I was surprised to notice two of them
sitting upon a bird-box over the draw, which just then stood open for
the passage of a tug-boat. The toll-gatherer told me they had come "from
some place" eight or ten days before. His attention had been called to
them by his cat, who was trying to get up to the box to bid them
welcome. He believed that she discovered them within three minutes of
their arrival. It seemed not unlikely. In its own way a cat is a pretty
sharp ornithologist.

One or two cormorants were almost always ab