From my account of the scarcity of birds in Cedar Creek ravine the reader will have already inferred, perhaps, that I did not spend my days there, great as were its botanical attractions. My last morning’s experience at Pulaski, the evidence there seen that the vernal migration was at full tide, or near it, had brought on a pretty acute attack of ornithological fever,--a spring disease which I am happy to believe has become almost an epidemic in some parts of the United States within recent years,--and not even the sight of new ferns and new flowers could allay its symptoms. I had counted upon finding a similar state of things here,--all the woods astir with wings. Instead of that, I found the fields alive with chipping sparrows, the air full of chimney swifts, the shade trees in front of the hotel vocal with goldfinch notes, and, comparatively speaking, nothing else. By the end of the second day I was fast becoming disconsolate. “No birds here,” I wrote in my journal. “I have tried woods of all sorts. A very few parula warblers, two or three red-eyed vireos, one yellow-throated vireo, seven Louisiana water thrushes in the glen, one prairie warbler, and a few oven-birds! No Bewick wrens. Two purple finches and one or two phœbes have been the only additions to my Virginia list.” A pitiful tale. Vacations are short and precious, and it goes hard with us to see them running to waste. The next evening (May 3) it was the same story continued. “It is marvelous, the difference between this beautiful place, diversified with fields and woods,--hardwood, cedar, pine,--it is marvelous, the difference between this heavenly spot and Pulaski in the matter of birds. There I registered six new arrivals in half an hour Wednesday morning; here I have made but six additions to my list in two full days. There is scarcely a sign of warbler migration. Was it that in Pulaski the woods were comparatively small, and the birds had to congregate in them? Or does Pulaski lie in a route of migration?” Wild surmises, both of them; but wisdom is not to be looked for in a fever patient. “Six additions in two full days,” I wrote; but the second day was not yet full. As evening came on I went out to stand awhile upon the bridge; and while I listened to the brawling of the creek and admired the beautiful scene below me, the moon shining straight down upon it, a night-hawk called from the sky, and afterward--not from the sky--a whippoorwill. Here, then, were two more names for my catalogue; but even so,--six or eight,--it was a beggarly rate of increase in such a favored spot and in the very nick of the season. The “six additions,” it may ease the reader’s curiosity to know, were the Carolina wren, the summer tanager, the purple finch, the indigo bunting, the blue-gray gnatcatcher, and the phœbe.