The Story of a Bird Lover

e region, and now, as I became acquainted with them, the list of known kinds grew rapidly. Wilson's thrush, the brown thrasher, the house- wren, the scarlet tanager, the rose-breasted grosbeak, the yellow-breasted chat, the orchard oriole, the Baltimore oriole, the blue-winged yellow warbler, and the yellow warbler were noticeable, most of them common, and new to me. The scarlet tanager and the yellow-breasted chat particularly struck me, ? one a gorgeous, fiery spot among the fresh new green of the oak leaves, and the other a voice, the owner of which remained long unknown. This voice came from various tangles and dense thickets. It began with a croak, and then followed a sort of whoop ; now a sharp whistle succeeded by a rapid series of shortwhistling notes, staccato and diminuendo, with longer intervals toward the close. Again the noise was like the mewing of cats, and sometimes a young puppy seemed concealed in the bushes. The whole thing puzzled me. The vocabulary of the chat is not limited; the bird is a polyglot and vociferous. Once, on a very still day, about noon, when nature was silent, ? no songster carolled and hardly a zephyr stirred, ? I saw a bird rise from a dense thicket and begin a curious flight, like that of some butterfly or large moth, and as seemingly inconsequent. With dangling legs and slowly fluttering wings, with feathers apparently awry, he poised for a moment, and then burst into the series of notes that had so long confounded me; t... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.