ered with snow, a flock of perhaps a hundred collected in
one of the taller maples in the Garden, till the tree looked from a
distance like an autumn hickory, its leafless branches still thickly
dotted with nuts. Four days afterward, what seemed to be the same
company made their appearance in the Common. Of the flycatchers, I have
noted the kingbird, the least flycatcher, and the phoebe. The two
former stay to breed. Twice in the fall I have found a kingfisher about
the Frog Pond. Once the fellow sprung his watchman's rattle. He was
perhaps my most unexpected caller, and for a minute or so I was not
entirely sure whether indeed I was in Boston or not. The blue jay and
the crow know too much to be caught in such a place, although one may
often enough see the latter passing overhead. Every now and then, in the
traveling season, a stray sandpiper or two will be observed teetering
round the edge of the Common and Garden ponds; and one day, when the
latter was drained, I saw quite a flock of some one of the smaller
species feeding over its bottom. Very picturesque they were, feeding and
flying in close order. Besides these must be mentioned the
yellow-throated vireo, the bay-winged bunting, the swamp sparrow, the
field sparrow, the purple finch, the red-poll linnet, the savanna
sparrow, the tree sparrow, the night-hawk (whose celebrated tumbling
trick may often be witnessed by evening strollers in the Garden), the
woodcock (I found the body of one which had evidently met its death
against the electric wire), and among the best of all, the chickadees,
who sometimes make the whole autumn cheerful with their presence, but
about whom I say nothing here because I have said so much elsewhere.

Of fugitive cage-birds, I recall only five--all in the Garden. One of
these, feeding tamely in the path, I suspected for an English robin but
he was not in full plumage, and my conjecture may have been incorrect.
Another was a diminutive finch, dressed in a suit of red, blue, and
green. He sat in a bush, saying _No, no!_ to a feline admirer who was
making love to him earnestly. The others were a mocking-bird, a cardinal
grosbeak, and a paroquet. The mocking-bird and the grosbeak might
possibly have been wild, had the question been one of latitude simply,
but their demeanor satisfied me to the contrary. The former's awkward
attempt at alighting on the tip of a fence-picket seemed evidence enough
that he had not been long at large. The paroquet