May, it would be carelessness inexcusable not to make sure of the fact. And soon I had my glass upon him,--in high plumage, red cheeks and all. He had not been disturbed in the least, and kept up his music till I had had my fill and could stay no longer,--all the while in low branches and in clear view. Few songs could be less interesting in themselves, but few could have been more welcome,--for the better part of twenty years I had been listening for it: about five notes, a little louder and more emphatic than the blackpoll’s, it seemed to me, but still faint and, as I expressed it to myself, “next to nothing.” The handsome creature--olive and bright yellow, boldly marked with black and white--remained the whole time in one tree, traveling over the limbs in a rather listless fashion, and singing almost incessantly. He was my hundredth Virginia bird,--as my list then stood, question marks included,--and the second one whose song I had heard for the first time on this vacation trip. The day had begun prosperously. After such a stirring up, a man’s ears are apt to be abnormally sensitive, not to say imaginative; then, if ever, he will hear wonders: for which reason, it may be, I had turned but a corner or two before I was stopped by another set of notes, a strain that I knew, or felt that I ought to know, but could not place a name upon at the moment. This bird, too, was run down without difficulty, and proved to be a magnolia warbler,--another yellow-rump, like the Cape May and the myrtle-bird. The song, unlike its owner, is but slightly marked, and to make matters worse, is heard by me only in the season of the bird’s spring passage; but I laughed at myself for not recognizing it. I was still in a mood for discoveries, however, and within half an hour was again in eager chase, this time over a crazy zigzag fence into a dense thicket, all for a black-and-white creeper (my fiftieth specimen, perhaps, in the last fortnight), whose notes, as they came to me from a distance, sounded like a creeper’s, to be sure, but with such a measure of difference as kept me on nettles till the author of them was in sight. I felt like a fool, as the common expression is, but was having “a good time,” notwithstanding.