At dusk you will see (I have seen him from the city roofs in Boston) a bird about the size of a pigeon mounting up into the sky by short flights, crying _peent_, until far over your head the creature will suddenly turn and on half-closed wings dive headlong toward the earth, when, just before hitting the ground, upward he swoops, at the same instant making a weird booming sound, a kind of hollow groan with his wings, as the wind rushes through their large feathers. This diver through the dim ocean of air is the nighthawk. Let one of the birds dive close to your head on a lonely dusky road, and your hair will try to jump out from under your hat. The whip-poor-will’s cry you all know. When you hear one this spring, go out into the twilight and watch for him. See him spring into the air, like a strange shadow, for flies; count his _whip-poor-wills_ (he may call it more than a hundred times in as many seconds!). But hear a circle of the birds, if possible, calling through the darkness of a wood all around you! V There is one strange bird song that is half song and half dance that perhaps most of you may never be able to hear and see; but as it is worth going miles to hear, and nights of watching to witness, I am going to set it here as one of your outdoor tasks or feats: you must hear the mating song of the woodcock. I have described the song and the dance in “Roof and Meadow,” in the chapter called “One Flew East and One Flew West.” Mr. Bradford Torrey has an account of it in his “Clerk of the Woods,” in the chapter named “Woodcock Vespers.” To hear the song is a rare experience for the habitual watcher in the woods, but one that you might have the first April evening that you are abroad. Go down to your nearest meadow--a meadow near a swampy piece of woods is best--and here, along the bank of the meadow stream, wait in the chilly twilight for the _speank_, _speank_, or the _peent_, _peent_, from the grass--the signal that the song is about to begin. VI One of the dreadful--positively dreadful--sounds of the late spring that I hear day in and day out is the gobbling, strangling, ghastly cries of young crows feeding. You will surely think something is being murdered. The crying of a hungry baby is musical in comparison. But it is a good sound to hear, for it reminds one of the babes in the woods--that a new generation of birds is being brought through from babyhood to gladden the world. It is a tender sound! The year is still young. VII