dip.
"Witch-e-wee!" "Cher!" "Chip-chip!"
Too elfin fine for human lip
Their dainty: "Tzeet! tzeet! tzeet!"

When we shall walk together
In Paradise, Most Dear,
May it be warbler weather,
Divine with flutterings
Of exquisite wee wings,
Our own familiar angelings
That piped God's praises here.

SUMMER RESIDENTS AT A WISCONSIN LAKE

BY KATHARINE COMAN

"Another beautiful day of sunshine and shimmering leaves and
bird-notes and human love."

--Katharine Coman: _Letter_.

The summer resort in question is only one of the numberless lakelets
that dot the hill country of Wisconsin; a mere dimple in the sunny
landscape, filled with limpid water. The banks are overhung by
beautiful lindens and mammoth oaks and by hoar cedars of a thousand
years' growth.

So sloping are the shores that reeds and rushes run far out into the
lake, carrying the green life of the earth into the blue heaven of the
water. Creeks and bayous stretch in turn far back into the land, and
the reeds and rushes follow after. Knee-deep in the swamps stand the
tamarack trees. Their cool shades cherish the mystery of the primeval
forest that held undisputed sway in this region only fifty years ago.
Back on the hills lie rich grain fields and comfortable farmhouses,
each defined against the sky by its windmill and cluster of barns and
haystacks.

This is an ideal summer residence for birds who have a mind for
domestic joys. Nothing, for example, could be better adapted for
nesting purposes than these cedar trees; not so much the centuried
veterans, as the young things of ten or twenty years' growth. Their
dense and prickly foliage promises security from invasion, while the
close-set branches offer most attractive building-sites. Here the
robins place their substantial structures; a masonry of sticks and mud,
hollowed out within into a chamber as round and smooth as if molded on
a croquet ball, and lined with fine, soft grasses. The catbirds build
more loosely, weaving strips of cedar bark into a rough basket. The
interior is softened for the tender bodies of the anticipated nestlings
by coils of horse hair. The mourning dove lays her eggs on a frail
scaffolding of cedar twigs, with the merest suggestion of padding. How
the eggs are kept in place on windy days is a mystery to the
uninitiated. As for brooding the young, the mother bird soon gives over
the attempt to do more than sit alongsid