tor of the avian choir, the chickadee
sounds two sweet tones, clear and musical, like keynotes blown from a
silver pipe. The wood thrush sounds a few organ tones, resonant and
thrilling. It is almost his last summer service; soon, like the
thrashers, he will be drooping and silent. The chewink, the indigo
bird, the glad goldfinches, the plaintive pewees are the sopranos; the
blue-bird, the quail, with her long, sweet call, and the grosbeak,
with his mellow tones, are the altos; the nuthatch and the tanager
take up the tenor, while the red-headed woodpeckers, the crows and the
cuckoos bear down heavy on the bass. Growing with the light, the fugue
swells into crescendo. Lakes of sunshine and capes of shadow down the
old road are more sharply defined. Bushes of tall, white melilot,
clustered with myriads of tiny flowers, exhale a sweet fragrance into
the morning air. The clearing around the house is flooded with
sunlight. In the wooded pasture some trunks are bathed with a golden
glory, while others yet stand iron gray in the deep shadows. The
world is awake. The day's work begins. One late young redhead in a
hole high up in the decaying trunk of an aspen tree calls loudly for
his breakfast, redoubling his noise as his mother approaches with the
first course. Sitting clumsily on a big stump, a big baby cowbird,
well able to shift for himself, shamelessly takes food from his little
field sparrow foster-mother, scarcely more than half his size. Soon he
will leave her and join the flocks of his kindred in the oat-fields
and the swamps. Young chewinks are being fed down among the ripening
May-apples in the pasture. A catbird with soft "quoots" assembles her
family in the hazel and the wood-thrush sounds warning "quirts" as
fancied peril approaches her children beneath the ripening
blackberries. From the top of a tall white oak a red squirrel leaps to
the arching branches of an elm, continuing his foraging there. Sitting
straight up on a mossy log the chipmunk holds in his paws a bit of
bread thrown from somebody's basket, nibbles at it for a while and
then makes a dash for the thicket, carrying the bread in his mouth.

[Illustration: "EVERY TREE IS A PICTURE" (p. 22)]

Tiny rabbits venture out from the tall grasses and look on life with
timid eyes. Bees and butterflies are busy with the day's work. Life
with its beauty and its joy is everywhere abundant. Living things swim
in and upon the brook, insects run and leap among the