One of our most lavish singers all summer long is the indigo bunting; yet when he first came back from the South he was very shy, and his voice seemed to be out of tune, so that, even when he tried to sing, which was seldom, his effort sounded like the creaking of a rusty door-hinge. Afterwards, however, when he got the cobwebs out of his larynx, he made up for all his previous silence. Quite different is the habit of the towhee, which announces his presence by his loud, explosive trill--all too brief--or his complaining "chewing." Sometimes the rambler and bird gazer meets with other than avian "specimens" in his excursions. One evening I was loitering in a distant hollow, ogling with my field glass several lark sparrows that were flitting about on the ground in an adjacent patch of some kind. The birds were singing as only these beautiful sparrows can, and the quiet of the evening lent an idyllic charm to their rich and varied chansons. On the other side of a small stream stood a shanty, in the door of which sat an old negro woman. In looking at the birds, I sometimes turned the glass toward the shanty, although too intent on my studies to notice it. Presently the woman could no longer endure my apparent espionage, and so she said: "Go 'bout yer own business, mister, 'n' don' ye be spyin' inter my house!" TROUBLE AMONG THE BIRDS* *The larger part of this chapter was first published in "The Christian Endeavor World," Boston; the rest of it in "Our Animal Friends," New York. I reprint it here by permission of both these journals. Even at the risk of causing a feeling of dejection on the reader's part, I am going to put one "trouble" chapter into this volume. There are trials in the birds' domain, and perhaps you and I will feel more sympathy with them, and will be led to protect them all the more carefully, if we know something about the "deep waters of affliction" through which they are sometimes compelled to pass. Our native American birds, at least some of them, suffer a good deal at the hands, so to speak, of the pestiferous English sparrows, which were introduced into this country by some egregious blunder. There can be no doubt that the English sparrows are regular bullies. They do not fight other birds so much as they hector them, making life intolerable by their ribaldry, coarse jests, and prying manners. Some birds, especially many of our beautiful native species, are sensitively organized, and cannot endure such boorish society as the badly bred foreigners furnish. That as much as anything has driven our genteel bluebirds away from our homes into the woods and other out-of-the-way places. How would you feel, my friend, if, as you were going along the street, a lot of hoodlums should take to gibing and hooting at you?