of a tall Birch, the better to
proclaim my perfidy to the whole world, would have excited the interest
and applause of the coolest observer.

So much in a general sense; but let me discriminate; "for my purpose
holds" to call my favorites by name, and point them out to you, as the
tuneful procession passes.

Every stage of the advancing season gives prominence to certain birds as
to certain flowers. The Dandelion tells me when to look for the Swallow,
and I know the Thrushes will not linger when the Orchis is in bloom. In
my latitude, April is emphatically the month of the Robin. In large
numbers they scour the fields and groves. You hear their piping in the
meadow, in the pasture, on the hillside. Walk in the woods, and the dry
leaves rustle with the whir of their wings, the air is vocal with their
cheery call. In excess of joy and vivacity, they run, leap, scream,
chase each other through the air, diving and sweeping among the trees
with perilous rapidity.

In that free, fascinating, half-work and half-play
pursuit,--sugar-making,--a pursuit which still lingers in many parts of
New York, as in New England, the Robin is one's boon companion. When the
day is sunny and the ground bare, you meet him at all points and hear
him at all hours. At sunset, on the tops of the tall Maples, with look
heavenward, and in a spirit of utter abandonment, he carols his simple
strain. And sitting thus amid the stark, silent trees, above the wet,
cold earth, with the chill of winter still in the air, there is no
fitter or sweeter songster in the whole round year. It is in keeping
with the scene and the occasion. How round and genuine the notes are,
and how eagerly our ears drink them in! The first utterance, and the
spell of winter is thoroughly broken and the remembrance of it afar off.

Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one
of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic
visitants, as the Orchard-Starling or Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, with their
distant, high-bred ways. Hardy, noisy, frolicsome, neighborly and
domestic in his ways, strong of wing and bold in spirit, he is the
pioneer of the Thrush family, and well worthy of the finer artists whose
coming he heralds and in a measure prepares us for.

I could wish Robin less native and plebeian in one respect,--the
building of his nest. Its coarse material and rough masonry are
creditable neither to his skill as a workman nor to his ta