n oriole sang in the weeping elm, now and then
breaking his song to scold like an overgrown wren. Song-sparrows and
catbirds sang in the shrubbery; one robin had built its nest over the
front and one over the back door, and there was a chippy's nest in the
wistaria vine by the stoop. During the next twenty-four hours I saw and
heard, either right around the house or while walking down to bathe,
through the woods, the following forty-two birds:

Little green heron, night heron, red-tailed hawk, yellow-billed cuckoo,
kingfisher, flicker, humming-bird, swift, meadow-lark, red-winged
blackbird, sharp-tailed finch, song sparrow, chipping sparrow, bush
sparrow, purple finch, Baltimore oriole, cowbunting, robin, wood thrush,
thrasher, catbird, scarlet tanager, red-eyed vireo, yellow warbler,
black-throated green warbler, kingbird, wood peewee, crow, blue jay,
cedar-bird, Maryland yellowthroat, chickadee, black and white
creeper, barn swallow, white-breasted swallow, ovenbird, thistlefinch,
vesperfinch, indigo bunting, towhee, grasshopper-sparrow, and screech
owl.

The birds were still in full song, for on Long Island there is little
abatement in the chorus until about the second week of July, when
the blossoming of the chestnut trees patches the woodland with frothy
greenish-yellow.[*]

[*] Alas! the blight has now destroyed the chestnut trees,
and robbed our woods of one of their distinctive beauties.

Our most beautiful singers are the wood thrushes; they sing not only in
the early morning but throughout the long hot June afternoons. Sometimes
they sing in the trees immediately around the house, and if the air is
still we can always hear them from among the tall trees at the foot of
the hill. The thrashers sing in the hedgerows beyond the garden, the
catbirds everywhere. The catbirds have such an attractive song that it
is extremely irritating to know that at any moment they may interrupt
it to mew and squeal. The bold, cheery music of the robins always seems
typical of the bold, cheery birds themselves. The Baltimore orioles nest
in the young elms around the house, and the orchard orioles in the apple
trees near the garden and outbuildings. Among the earliest sounds of
spring is the cheerful, simple, homely song of the song-sparrow; and in
March we also hear the piercing cadence of the meadow-lark--to us one
of the most attractive of all bird calls. Of late years now and then
we hear the rollicking, bubbling m