sh."

Poor Red-Breasted Merganser! He has only one note, a croak. Perhaps
it was of him that Bryant was thinking when he wrote the stanzas "To
a Water-Fowl."

"The sentiment of feeling awakened by any of the aquatic fowls is
pre-eminently one of loneliness," says John Burroughs. "The Wood Duck
(see July BIRDS) which you approach, starts from the pond or the
marsh, the Loon neighing down out of the April sky, the Wild Goose,
the Curlew, the Stork, the Bittern, the Sandpiper, etc., awaken quite
a different train of emotions from those awakened by the land birds.
They all have clinging to them some reminiscence and suggestion of the
sea. Their cries echo its wildness and desolation; their wings are the
shape of its billows."

But the Evening Grosbeak, the Kentucky Warbler, the Skylark, land
birds all, are singers. They have music in their throats and in their
souls, though of varying quality. The Grosbeak's note is described by
different observers as a shrill _cheepy tee_ and a frog-like _peep_,
while one writer remarks that the males have a single metallic cry
like the note of a trumpet, and the females a loud chattering like the
large Cherry Birds.

The Kentucky Warbler's song is entirely unlike that of any other
Warbler, and is a loud, clearly whistled performance of five, six, or
seven notes, _turdle, turdle, turdle_, resembling in tone some of the
calls of the Carolina Wren. He is so persistent in his singing,
however, that the Red-Breasted Merganser's simple croak would
sometimes be preferable to it.

But the Skylark--

"All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams and heaven is over-flowed."

--C. C. MARBLE.

THE YELLOW LEGS.

Yellow Legs, or Lesser Tell tale sometimes called Yellow-leg Snipe,
and Little Cucu, inhabits the whole of North America, nesting in the
cold temperate and subarctic districts of the northern continent,
migrating south in winter to Argentine and Chili. It is much rarer in
the western than eastern province of North America, and is only
accidental in Europe. It is one of the wading birds, its food
consisting of larvae of insects, small shell fish and the like.

The nest of the Lesser Yellow Shanks, which it is sometimes called,
is a mere depression in the ground, without any lining. Sometimes,
however, it i