nounced during the first week of
March, sometimes by the robins, sometimes by the bluebirds. The latter,
it should be remarked, are an exception to the rule that our spring and
autumn callers arrive and depart in the night. My impression is that
their migrations are ordinarily accomplished by daylight. At all events
I have often seen them enter the Common, alight for a few minutes, and
then start off again; while I have never known them to settle down for a
visit of two or three days, in the manner of most other species. This
last peculiarity may be owing to the fact that the European sparrows
treat them with even more than their customary measure of incivility,
till the poor wayfarers have literally no rest for the soles of their
feet. They breed by choice in just such miniature meeting-houses as our
city fathers have provided so plentifully for their foreign _proteges_;
and probably the latter, being aware of this, feel it necessary to
discourage at the outset any idea which these blue-coated American
interlopers may have begun to entertain of settling in Boston for the
summer.

The robins may be said to be abundant with us for more than half the
year; but they are especially numerous for a month or two early in the
season. I have counted more than thirty feeding at once in the lower
half of the parade ground, and at nightfall have seen forty at roost in
one tree, with half as many more in the tree adjoining. They grow
extremely noisy about sunset, filling the air with songs, cackles, and
screams, till even the most stolid citizen pauses a moment to look up at
the authors of so much clamor.

By the middle of March the song sparrows begin to appear, and for a
month after this they furnish delightful music daily. I have heard them
caroling with all cheerfulness in the midst of a driving snow-storm. The
dear little optimists! They never doubt that the sun is on their side.
Of necessity they go elsewhere to find nests for themselves, where they
may lay their young; for they build on the ground, and a lawn which is
mowed every two or three days would be quite out of the question.

At the best, a public park is not a favorable spot in which to study
bird music. Species that spend the summer here, like the robin, the
warbling vireo, the red-eyed vireo, the chipper, the goldfinch, and the
Baltimore oriole, of course sing freely; but the much larger number
which merely drop in upon us by the way are busy feeding during their