Among the permanent summer residents here (one might say city residents, as they seem more abundant in town than out), the yellow warbler or summer yellow-bird is conspicuous. He comes about the middle of April, and seems particularly attached to the silver poplars. In every street, and all day long, one may hear his thin, sharp warble. When nesting, the female comes about the yard, pecking at the clothes-line, and gathering up bits of thread to weave into her nest. Swallows appear in Washington from the first to the middle of April. They come twittering along in the way so familiar to every New England boy. The barn swallow is heard first, followed in a day or two by the squeaking of the cliff-swallow. The chimney-swallows, or swifts, are not far behind, and remain here, in large numbers, the whole season. The purple martins appear in April, as they pass north, and again in July and August on their return, accompanied by their young. The national capital is situated in such a vast spread of wild, wooded, or semi-cultivated country, and is in itself so open and spacious, with its parks and large government reservations, that an unusual number of birds find their way into it in the course of the season. Rare warblers, as the black-poll, the yellow red-poll, and the bay-breasted, pausing in May on their northward journey, pursue their insect game in the very heart of the town. I have heard the veery-thrush in the trees near the White House; and one rainy April morning, about six o'clock, he came and blew his soft, mellow flute in a pear-tree in my garden. The tones had all the sweetness and wildness they have when heard in June in our deep Northern forests. A day or two afterward, in the same tree, I heard for the first time the song of the golden-crowned wren, or kinglet,--the same liquid bubble and cadence which characterize the wren-songs generally, but much finer and more delicate than the song of any other variety known to me; beginning in a fine, round, needle-like note, and rising into a full, sustained warble;--a strain, on the whole, remarkably exquisite and pleasing, the singer being all the while as busy as a bee, catching some kind of insects. If the ruby-crowned sings as well (and no doubt it does), Audubon's enthusiasm concerning its song, as he heard it in the wilds of Labrador, is not a bit extravagant. The song of the kinglet is the only characteristic that allies it to the wrens.