The woods brought us nothing,--beyond a chickadee or two,--but we were hardly out of them before we heard the blue jay scream of a red-shouldered hawk, and presently saw first one bird and then another (rusty shoulder and all) sailing above us. A grand sight it is, a soaring and diving hawk. May it never become less frequent. I must quote Thoreau once more, this time from memory, and for substance only. I am with him, heart and soul, when he prays for more hawks, though at the cost of fewer chickens. And I like the spirit of a friend of mine who girdled a tall pine tree in his woods, that it might serve as a perching station for such visitors. As we approached the village again, we came upon two phœbes. Like the white-breasted swallow, the phœbe winters in Florida, and is by a long time the earliest member of its family to arrive in New England. Red-winged blackbirds were numerous, of course, every one a male, and in one place we passed a flock of crow blackbirds feeding on the ground. Not the least interesting bird of the forenoon was a shrike, sitting motionless and dumb in an apple tree. The shrike has all the attractiveness of singularity. He is no lover of his kind, save as the lion loves the lamb and the hawk the chicken. Lonesome? No, I thank you. Except in breeding-time, he is sufficient unto himself. Even when he happens to feel like conversation, he goes not in search of company. He is like the amiable philosopher who was asked by some busybody why he so often talked to himself. “Well,” said he, “for two reasons: first, I like to talk to a sensible man, and secondly, I like to hear a sensible man talk.” In the present instance the shrike may very well have considered that there was little occasion for his talking, either to himself or to anybody else, since a bunch of twenty masculine redwings in some willow trees near by were chattering in chorus until, to use a good Old Colony phrase, a man could hardly hear himself think. Blackbird loquacity, each particular bird sputtering “to beat the band,” is one of the wonders of the world. WOODCOCK VESPERS When I came to this town to live, in April, ten years ago, one of my first concerns was to find a woodcock resort. The friend with whom I commonly took a stroll at sundown had never heard the “evening hymn” of that bird, and, knowing him for a lover of “the poetry of earth,” I was eager to help him to a new pleasure. If the thing was to be done at all, it must be done soon, as the bird’s musical season is brief. So we walked and made inquiries.