e author of "Out-door Papers,"
who tells us the trill of the Hair-Bird (_Fringilla socialis_) is
produced by the bird fluttering its wings upon its sides! The
Hermit-Thrush may be easily identified by his color; his back being a
clear olive-brown, becoming rufous on his rump and tail. A quill from
his wing placed beside one from his tail, on a dark ground, presents
quite a marked contrast.

I walk along the old road, and note the tracks in the thin layer of mud.
When do these creatures travel here? I have never yet chanced to meet
one. Here a partridge has set its foot; there, a woodcock; here, a
squirrel or mink; there, a skunk; there, a fox. What a clear, nervous
track Reynard makes! how easy to distinguish it from that of a little
dog,--it is so sharply cut and defined! A dog's track is coarse and
clumsy beside it. There is as much wildness in the track of an animal as
in its voice. Is a deer's track like a sheep's or a goat's? What
winged-footed fleetness and agility may be inferred from the sharp,
braided track of the gray squirrel upon the new snow! Ah! in nature is
the best discipline. I think the sculptor might carve finer and more
expressive lines if he grew up in the woods, and the painter
discriminate finer hues. How wood-life sharpens the senses, giving a new
power to the eye, the ear, the nose! And are not the rarest and most
exquisite songsters wood-birds?

Everywhere in these solitudes I am greeted with the pensive, almost
pathetic note of the Wood-Pewee. Do you know the Pewees? They are the
true Flycatchers, and are easily identified. They are very
characteristic birds, have very strong family traits, and very
pugnacious dispositions. Without any exception or qualification they are
the homeliest or the least elegant birds of our fields or forest.
Sharp-shouldered, big-headed, short-legged, of no particular color, of
little elegance in flight or movement, with a disagreeable flirt of the
tail, always quarrelling with their neighbors and with one another, no
birds are so little calculated to excite pleasurable emotions in the
beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection. The
King-Bird is the best-dressed member of the family, but he is a
braggart; and, though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant
coward, and shows the white feather at the slightest display of pluck in
his antagonist. I have seen him turn tail to a Swallow, and have known
the little Pewee in question to whip him be