one of the most
interesting and poetical of annual occurrences. The naturalist, who
notes the very day of each arrival, in order that he may verify former
observation or add to his material gathered for a new work, does not
necessarily anticipate with greater pleasure this event than do many
whose lives are brightened by the coming of the friends of their youth,
who alone of early companions do not change. First of all--and ever the
same delightful warbler--the Bluebird, who, in 1895, did not appear at
all in many localities, though here in considerable numbers last year,
betrays himself. "Did he come down out of the heaven on that bright
March morning when he told us so softly and plaintively that, if we
pleased, spring had come?" Sometimes he is here a little earlier, and
must keep his courage up until the cold snap is over and the snow is
gone. Not long after the Bluebird, comes the Robin, sometimes in March,
but in most of the northern states April is the month of his arrival.
With his first utterance the spell of winter is broken, and the
remembrance of it afar off. Then appears the Woodpecker in great
variety, the Flicker usually arriving first. He is always somebody's old
favorite, "announcing his arrival by a long, loud call, repeated from
the dry branch of some tree, or a stake in the fence--a thoroughly
melodious April sound."

Few perhaps reflect upon the difficulties encountered by the birds
themselves in their returning migrations. A voyager sometimes meets
with many of our common birds far out at sea. Such wanderers, it is
said, when suddenly overtaken by a fog, completely lose their sense of
direction and become hopelessly lost. Humming birds, those delicately
organized, glittering gems, are among the most common of the land
species seen at sea.

The present season has been quite favorable to the protection of birds.
A very competent observer says that not all of the birds migrated this
winter. He recently visited a farm less than an hour's ride from
Chicago, where he found the old place, as he relates it, "chucked full
of Robins, Blackbirds, and Woodpeckers," and others unknown to him.
From this he inferred they would have been in Florida had indications
predicted a severe winter. The trees of the south parks of Chicago,
and those in suburban places, have had, darting through their branches
during the months of December and January, nearly as many members of the
Woodpecker tribe as were found there du