I stayed by him till my patience failed, the mosquitoes helping to wear it out; and all the while he reiterated that comparatively lively _zip-zip_, so very different from the listless _zee-zee_, which I had seen him use on previous occasions, and had heard him use to-day. He was singing now, I said to myself, more like the bird at Natural Bridge, the only other one I had ever heard. It was pleasant to find that even this tenth-rate performer, one of the poorest of a poor family, had more than one tune in his music box. My spring vacation was planned to be botanical rather than ornithological; but we are not the masters of our own fate, though we sometimes try to think so, and my sketch is turning out a bird piece, after all. The truth is, I was in the birds’ country, and it was the birds’ hour. They waked me every morning,--veeries, bobolinks, vireos, sparrows, and what not;[8] and as the day began, so it continued. I hope I was not blind to other things. I remember at this moment how rejoiced I was at coming all unexpectedly upon a little bunch of yellow lady’s-slippers,--nine blossoms, I believe; rare enough and pretty enough to excite the dullest man’s enthusiasm. But the fact remains, if comparisons are to be insisted upon, that a creature like the Cape May warbler has all the beauty of a flower, with the added charm of voice and motion and elusiveness. The lady’s-slippers would wait for me,--unless somebody else picked them,--but the warbler could be trusted to lead me a chase, and give me, as the saying is, a run for my money. In other words, he was more interesting, and goes better into a story. My delight in him was the greater for a consideration yet to be specified. Twelve or thirteen years ago, when a party of us were in Franconia in June, we undertook a list of the birds of the township,--a list which the scientific ornithologist of the company afterward printed.[9] Now, returning to the place by myself, it became a point of honor with me to improve our work by the addition of at least a name or two. And the first candidate was the Cape May. The second was of a widely different sort; one of my most familiar friends, though more surprising as a bird of the White Mountains than even the Cape May. I speak of the wood thrush, the most southern member of the noble group of singers to which it belongs,--the _Hylocichlæ_, so called. It is to be regretted that we have no collective English name for them, especially as their vocal quality--by which I mean something not quite the same as musical ability--is such as to set them beyond comparison above all other birds of North America, if not of the world.