Among Long Island singers the wood thrushes are the sweetest; they nest right around our house, and also in the more open woods of oak, hickory, and chestnut, where their serene, leisurely songs ring through the leafy arches all day long, but especially at daybreak and in the afternoons. Baltimore orioles, beautiful of voice and plumage, hang their nests in a young elm near a corner of the porch; robins, catbirds, valiant kingbirds, song-sparrows, chippies, bright colored thistle-finches, nest within a stone’s throw of the house, in the shrubbery or among the birches and maples; grasshopper sparrows, humble little creatures with insect-like voices, nest almost as close, in the open field, just beyond the line where the grass is kept cut; humming-birds visit the honeysuckles and trumpet-flowers; chimney swallows build in the chimneys; barn swallows nest in the stable and old barn, wrens in the bushes near by. Downy woodpeckers and many other birds make their homes in the old orchard; during the migrations it is alive with warblers. Towhees, thrashers, and Maryland yellow-throats build and sing in the hedges by the garden; bush sparrows and dainty little prairie warblers in the cedar-grown field beyond. Red-wing blackbirds haunt the wet places. Chickadees wander everywhere; the wood-pewees, red-eyed vireos, and black-and-white creepers keep to the tall timber, where the wary, thievish jays chatter, and the great-crested fly-catchers flit and scream. In the early spring, when the woods are still bare, when the hen-hawks cry as they soar high in the upper air, and the flickers call and drum on the dead trees, the strong, plaintive note of the meadow lark is one of the most noticeable and most attractive sounds. On the other hand, the cooing of the mourning doves is most noticeable in the still, hot summer days. In the thick tangles chats creep and flutter and jerk, and chuckle and whoop as they sing; I have heard them sing by night. The cedar birds offer the most absolute contrast to the chats, in voice, manner, and habits. They never hide, they are never fussy or noisy; they always behave as if they were so well-bred that it is impossible to resent the inroads the soft, quiet, pretty creatures make among the cherries. One flicker became possessed of a mania to dig its hole in one corner of the house, just under the roof. It hammered lustily at boards and shingles, and returned whenever driven away; until at last we were reluctantly forced to decree its death. Oven-birds are very plentiful, and it seems to me that their flight song is more frequently given after dusk than in daylight. It is sometimes given when the whippoorwills are calling. In late June evenings, especially by moonlight, but occasionally even when the night is dark, we hear this song from the foot of the hill where the woods begin. There seems to be one particular corner where year after year one or more oven-birds dwell