There are few or no pessimists among the birds. One might think the call of the turtle-dove, which sounds to us like "woe, woe, woe," a wail of despair; but it is not. It really means "love, love, love." The plaint of the wood pewee, pensive and like a human sigh, is far from pessimistic, although in a minor key. The cuckoo comes the nearest to being a pessimist, with his doleful call, and the catbird and the jay, with their peevish and complaining notes, might well be placed in that category, were it not for their songs when the love passion makes optimists even of them. The strain of the hermit thrush which floats down to me from the wooded heights above day after day at all hours, but more as the shades of night are falling--what does this pure, serene, exalted strain mean but that, in Browning's familiar words, God's in his heaven-- All's right with the world! The bird may sing for his mate and his brood alone, but what puts it into his heart to do that? Certainly it is good to have a mate and a brood! A new season brings new experiences with the same old familiar birds, or new thoughts about them. This season I have had new impressions of our cuckoos, which are oftener heard than seen. Of the two species, the black-billed and the yellow-billed, the former prevails in the latitude of New England, and the latter farther south. We cannot hail our black-billed as "blithe newcomer," as Wordsworth does his cuckoo. "Doleful newcomer" would be a fitter title. There is nothing cheery or animated in his note, and he is about as much a "wandering voice" as is the European bird. He does not babble of sunshine and of flowers. He is a prophet of the rain, and the country people call him the rain crow. All his notes are harsh and verge on the weird. His nesting-instincts seem to lead him, or rather her, to the thorn-bushes as inevitably as the grass finch's lead her to the grass. The cuckoo seems such an unpractical and inefficient bird that it is interesting to see it doing things. One of our young poets has a verse in which he sings of The solemn priestly bumble-bee That marries rose to rose. He might apply the same or similar adjectives to the cuckoo. Solemn and priestly, or at least monkish, it certainly is. It is a real recluse and suggests the druidical. If it ever frolics or fights, or is gay and cheerful like our other birds, I have yet to witness it.