alights again
a little further up. The sparrow is after him; but, as he comes dashing
round the trunk, he always seems to expect to find the creeper perched
upon some twig, as any other bird would be, and it is only after a
little reconnoitring that he again discovers him clinging to the
vertical bole. Then he makes another onset with a similar result; and
these manoeoeuvres are repeated, till the creeper becomes disgusted,
and takes to another tree.

The olive-backed thrushes and the hermits may be looked for every spring
and autumn, and I have known forty or fifty of the former to be present
at once. The hermits most often travel singly or in pairs, though a
small flock is not so very uncommon. Both species preserve absolute
silence while here; I have watched hundreds of them, without hearing so
much as an alarm note. They are far from being pugnacious, but their
sense of personal dignity is large, and once in a while, when the
sparrows pester them beyond endurance, they assume the offensive with
much spirit. There are none of our feathered guests whom I am gladder to
see; the sight of them inevitably fills me with remembrances of happy
vacation seasons among the hills of New Hampshire. If only they would
sing on the Common as they do in those northern woods! The whole city
would come out to hear them.

During every migration large numbers of warblers visit us. I have noted
the golden-crowned thrush, the small-billed water-thrush, the
black-and-white creeper, the Maryland yellow-throat, the blue
yellow-back, the black-throated green, the black-throated blue, the
yellow-rump, the summer yellow-bird, the black-poll, the Canada
flycatcher, and the redstart. No doubt the list is far from complete,
as, of course, I have not used either glass or gun; and without one or
other of these aids the observer must be content to let many of these
small, tree-top-haunting birds pass unidentified. The two kinglets give
us a call occasionally, and in the late summer and early autumn the
humming-birds spend several weeks about our flower-beds.

It would be hard for the latter to find a more agreeable stopping-place
in the whole course of their southward journey. What could they ask
better than beds of tuberoses, Japanese lilies, _Nicotiana_ (against the
use of which they manifest not the slightest scruple), petunias, and the
like? Having in mind the Duke of Argyll's assertion that "no bird can
ever fly backwards,"[2] I have more tha