Se—u—re? Se—u—u.
Or could it be a woodcock?
He got up by and bye and walked toward the field of yellow grain on one side of the pasture. Before he was halfway he stopped, arrested by a wonderful sound: from the top rail of the fence before him, separating the pasture from the grain, came a loud ringing whistle. It was Bobwhite! Boys at school sometimes whistled "bobwhite." He knew this bird because he had seen him hanging amid snow and ice and holly boughs outside meat shops about Christmas time. Here now was the summer song: in it the green of the woods, the gold of the grain, the far brave clearness of the June sky.
He tipped forward, not because his feet made any noise. Once again, nearer, that marvellous music rang past him, echoing on into the woods. Then it ceased; and as Webster approached the field fence what he saw was a rabbit watching him over the grass tops until with long soft leaps it escaped through the fence to the safety of the field.
For a while he remained leaning on this fence and looking out across the coming harvest. Twenty yards away a clump of alders was in bloom: some bird was singing out there joyously. It made a che che che sound, also; but its colour was brown.
The idea occurred to Webster that he would recross the pasture to the field on the other side and go on to the turnpike: one ran there, for he heard vehicles passing. He would make inquiry about some piece of forest further from the city. He remembered again what the professor told them:
"Some of you this summer during your vacation may go out to some nearby strip of woods—what little is left of the old forest—in quest of the warbler. Seek the wildest spots you can find. The Kentucky bluegrass landscape is thin and tame now, but there are places of thick undergrowth where the bird still spends his Kentucky summer. Shall I give you my own experience as to where I found him when a boy half a century ago? On my father's farm there was a woodland pasture. The land dipped there into a marshy hollow. In this hollow was a stock pond. Around the edges of the pond grew young cane. It was always low because the cattle browsed it. The highest stalks were scarcely five feet. On the edge of the canebrake a thicket of papaw and blackberry vines added rankness and forest secrecy. It was here I discovered him. The pale green and yellow of his plumage blent with the pale green and yellow of the leaves and stalks. But it was many years before I knew that the bird I had found was the Kentucky warbler. If I had only known it when I was a boy!"