In one apple tree in the orchard we find a flicker’s nest every year; the young make a queer, hissing, bubbling sound, a little like the boiling of a pot. This same year one of the young ones fell out; I popped it back into the hole, whereupon its brothers and sisters “boiled” for several minutes like the cauldron of a small and friendly witch. John Burroughs, and a Long Island neighbor, John Lewis Childs, drove over to see me, in this same June of 1907, and I was able to show them the various birds of most interest—the purple finch, the black-throated green warbler, the redwings in their unexpected nesting place by the old barn, and the orchard orioles and yellow-billed cuckoos in the garden. The orchard orioles this year took much interest in the haying, gleaning in the cut grass for grasshoppers. The barn swallows that nest in the stable raised second broods, which did not leave the nest until the end of July. When the barn swallows gather in their great flocks just prior to the southward migration, the gathering sometimes takes place beside a house, and then the swallows seem to get so excited and bewildered that they often fly into the house. When I was a small boy I took a keen, although not a very intelligent, interest in natural history, and solemnly recorded whatever I thought to be notable. When I was nine years old we were passing the summer near Tarrytown, on the Hudson. My diary for September 4, 1868, runs as follows: “Cold and rainy. I was called in from breakfast to a room. When I went in there what was my surprise to see on walls, curtains and floor about forty swallows. All the morning long in every room of the house (even the kitchen) were swallows. They were flying south. Several hundred were outside and about seventy-five in the house. I caught most of them (and put them out of the windows). The others got out themselves. One flew on my pants where he stayed until I took him off.” At the White House we are apt to stroll around the grounds for a few minutes after breakfast; and during the migrations, especially in spring, I often take a pair of field glasses so as to examine any bird as to the identity of which I am doubtful. From the end of April the warblers pass in troops—myrtle, magnolia, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, blackburnian, black-throated blue, blue-winged, Canadian, and many others, with at the very end of the season the black-poll—all of them exquisite little birds, but not conspicuous as a rule, except perhaps the blackburnian, whose brilliant orange throat and breast flame when they catch the sunlight as he flits among the trees. The males in their dress of courtship are easily recognized by any one who has Chapman’s book on the warblers. On May 4, 1906, I saw a Cape May warbler, the first I had ever seen. It was in a small pine. It was fearless, allowing a close approach, and as it was a male in high plumage, it was unmistakable.