And so it is generally. One of my fellow townsmen, however, has an estate which forms a bright exception. There one sees bluebirds and martins. Year after year, punctual as the spring itself, they are back in their old places. And why? Because the owner of the estate, by a little shooting, mercifully persistent and therefore seldom necessary, keeps the English sparrows out. My thanks to him. His is the only colony of martins anywhere in my neighborhood. A FAVORITE ROUND After three days of heat, a cool morning. I take an electric car, leave it at a point five miles away, and in a semicircular course come round to the track again a mile or two nearer home. This is one of my favorite walks, such as every stroller finds for himself, affording a pleasant variety within comfortable distance. First I come to a plain on which are hay-fields, gardens, and apple orchards; an open, sunny place where, in the season, one may hope to find the first bluebird, the first vesper sparrow, or the first bobolink. A spot where things like these have happened to one has henceforth a charm of its own. Memory walks beside us, as it were, and makes good all present deficiencies. I am hardly here this morning before the tiny, rough voice of a yellow-winged sparrow reaches me from a field in which the new-mown grass lies in windrows. Grass or stubble, he can still be happy, it appears. The grasshopper sparrow--to give him his better name--is one of the quaintest of songsters, his musical effort being more like an insect’s than a bird’s; yet he is as fully inspired, as completely absorbed in his work, to look at him, as any mockingbird or thrush. I watched one a few days ago as he sat at the top of a dwarf pear tree. How seriously he took himself! No “minor poet” of a human sort ever surpassed him in that respect; head thrown back, and bill most amazingly wide open, all for that ragged thread of a tune, which nevertheless was decidedly emphatic and could be heard a surprisingly long distance. I smiled at him, but he did not mind. When minor poets cease writing, then, we may guess, the grasshopper sparrow will quit singing. Far be the day. To be a poet is to be a poet, and distinctions of major and minor are of trifling consequence. The yellow-wing counts with the savanna, but is smaller and has even less of a voice. Impoverished grass fields are his favorite breeding-places, and he is generally a colonist. This morning (it is July 10) the vesper sparrow is singing here also, with the song sparrow and the chipper. And while I am listening to them--but mainly to the vesper--the sickle stroke (as I believe Mr. Burroughs calls it) of a meadow lark cuts the air. It is a good concert, vesper sparrow and lark going most harmoniously together; and to make it better still, a bobolink pours out one copious strain. Him I am especially glad to hear. After the grass is cut one feels as if bobolink days were over.