But I must return to the subject of migration. The fifteenth of March was a raw, blustering day, as its predecessors had been; but in the woods several fox-sparrows were singing, not their best, of course, but fairly well for such weather. They must have come during the night. But why had they come when the weather was so cold? Most birds wait until there is a bland air-current from the south on which they can ride triumphantly. Had this small band of fox-sparrows followed the example of a well-known American humorist, and gone to “roughing it”? Strange to say, I saw no more fox-sparrows until the twenty-eighth, when the weather had grown warm. That was also the day on which I saw the first winter wren scudding about in the brush-heaps and wood-piles and perking up his tail in the most approved bantam fashion. It may be a poor joke, but the thought came of its own accord, that if brevity is the soul of wit, this little wren must have a very witty tail; and it really is an amusing appendage, held up at an acute angle with the bird’s sloping back.
As I strolled along the edge of the woods on the same day, the fine rhythmic trill of the bush-sparrow reached my ear. He was celebrating his return to this sylvan resort, and his voice was in excellent trim; the fact is, I never heard him acquit himself quite so well, not even in May. Miss Lucy Larcom, of tender and sacred memory, has happily characterized this triller’s song in melodious verse:—
“One syllable, clear and soft
As a raindrop’s silvery patter,
Or a tinkling fairy-bell, heard aloft,
In the midst of the merry chatter
Of robin and linnet and wren and jay,—
One syllable oft repeated;
He has but a word to say,
And of that he will not be cheated.”