“The three birds that are the most noticeable in the latter part of March, that has made up its mind to go out like a lamb and let Pussy-willow wave in peace in moist pasture and the delicate blue-and-white hepaticas star the edges of dry woods, are the Red-winged Blackbirds, the Kingfishers, and the cheerful little Phœbe. All love the vicinity of water, but the Red-wing locates often in merely marshy ground, while the bird who is a fisherman by trade locates near a pond or stream of considerable size and the Phœbe comes to house or woodshed.
“ ‘Among all the birds that return to us in late March or April, which is the most striking and most compels attention?’ asked a bird-lover of a group of kindred spirits.
“ ‘The Fox Sparrow,’ said one, who lived on the edge of a village where sheltered wild fields stretched uphill to the woodlands. ‘Every morning when I open my window I can hear them almost without listening.’
RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD
(Upper Figure, Male; Lower Figure, Female)
Order—Passeres Family—Icteridæ
Genus—Agelaius Species—Phœniceus
“ ‘The Phœbe,’ said another, who was the owner of a pretty home, where many rambling sheds broke the way from cow-barn to pasture.
“ ‘The Whip-poor-will, but that does not come until late in the month,’ answered a third, a dweller in a remote colony of artists in a picturesque spot of cleared woodland, where the ground dropped quickly to a stream.
“ ‘No, the Woodcock,’ said her nearest neighbour, a man whose cottage was upon the upper edge of these same woods, where they were margined by moist meadows and soft bottom-lands,—a man who spent much time out-of-doors at dawn and twilight studying sky effects.