one of these little zigzagging blurs came purring toward me, couching
his long bill like a lance, his throat sparkling with angry fire, to
warn me off from a Missouri-currant whose honey he was sipping. And many
a time he has driven me out of a flower-bed. This summer, by the way,
a pair of these winged emeralds fastened their mossy acorn-cup upon a
bough of the same elm which the orioles had enlivened the year before.
We watched all their proceedings from the window through an opera-glass,
and saw their two nestlings grow from black needles with a tuft of
down at the lower end, till they whirled away on their first short
experimental flights. They became strong of wing in a surprisingly short
time, and I never saw them or the male bird after, though the female was
regular as usual in her visits to our petunias and verbenas. I do not
think it ground enough for a generalization, but in the many times when
I watched the old birds feeding their young, the mother always alighted,
while the father as uniformly remained upon the wing.

The bobolinks are generally chance visitors, tinkling through the
garden in blossoming-time, but this year, owing to the long rains early
in the season, their favorite meadows were flooded, and they were driven
to the upland. So I had a pair of them domiciled in my grass field. The
male used to perch in an apple-tree, then in full bloom, and, while I
stood perfectly still close by, he would circle away, quivering round
the entire field of five acres, with no break in his song, and settle
down again among the blooms, to be hurried away almost immediately by a
new rapture of music. He had the volubility of an Italian charlatan at a
fair, and, like him, appeared to be proclaiming the merits of some quack
remedy. _Opodeldoc-opodeldoc-try-Doctor-Lincoln's-opodeldoc!_ he seemed
to repeat over and over again, with a rapidity that would have distanced
the deftest-tongued Figaro that ever rattled. I remember Count Gurowski
saying once, with that easy superiority of knowledge about this country
which is the monopoly of foreigners, that we had no singing-birds! Well,
well, Mr. Hepworth Dixon(1) has found the typical America in Oneida and
Salt Lake City. Of course, an intelligent European is the best judge
of these matters. The truth is there are more singing-birds in Europe
because there are fewer forests. These songsters love the neighborhood
of man because hawks and owls are rarer, while their own food