It was only a few months ago that this same dreamer found himself on the shore of Delaware Bay, with the three friends who had gone adventuring with him for so many happy years. In the middle of a maze of woods and swamps shrouded in clouds of low-lying mist, they found at last the nest of the bald eagle for which they were searching. It was in the top of a towering sour-gum tree, and the great birds circled around, giving futile little cries that sounded like the squeaking of a slate pencil. As it was too misty to photograph the nest and the birds, the party started off exploring until the light became better. Following the song of a fox sparrow, the dreamer became separated from the others in the mist, and after plashing through half-frozen morasses, found himself on the barren shore of the bay itself. As he stood there, with the white mist curling around him like smoke, from the sea came a clamor of voices. Nearer and nearer it swept, until a wild trumpeting sounded not thirty feet above his head. Around and around the clanging chorus swept, while, stare as he would, he could not spy even a feather of the flock so close above him. At the sound the years rolled back. Once again he was in the clover field in the gray twilight. Once again, on a far-away hillside, he heard that other chorus of his dreams. For a moment, in the lonely mist by the sea, he had a strange illusion that the life of which that cold hillside was a memory was the reality, and the present the dream. * * * * * It takes five years to understand Eskimo. It takes a long lifetime to learn bird-language. At any time, in any place, the collector of bird-notes may hear an unknown bird or a strange song from a known bird. Wherefore let no ornithologist vaunt himself. He may be able to distinguish between the song of the purple finch and the warbling vireo, or the chestnut-sided warbler, the redstart, and the yellow warbler, and then hear some common bird, like the Maryland yellow-throat, sing a song which he has never heard before and may never hear again; or an oven bird, or even a phoebe, rise to the ecstasy of a flight-song which no more resembles their everyday measure than water resembles wine. Early in my experience as a bird-student, I learned to walk humbly. It happened on this wise. I had been invited to spend my summer at a Sanitarium for Deserted Husbands. Said retreat was maintained by a noble-hearted benefactor in a vast, rambling cool house, bordered on three sides by dense woods. The day of my arrival I was approached by one of the older inmates, who, with false and flattering tongue, praised my scanty knowledge of bird-ways, and made me promise to teach him the different bird-songs as he heard them from the house.