Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/325

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EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS.
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chestnut crown, holds up its head and pours forth its che che che che che che. . . . . Saw a pine warbler, by ventriloquism sounding further off than it was, which was seven or eight feet, hopping and flitting from twig to twig, apparently picking the small flies at and about the base of the needles at the extremities of the twigs. . . . . A warm and hazy, but breezy, day. The sound of the laborers striking the iron nails of the railroad with their sledges is as in the sultry days of summer,—resounds, as it were, from the hazy sky as from a roof, a more confined, and in that sense more domestic, sound echoing along between the earth and the low heavens. The same strokes would produce a very different sound in the winter Beyond the desert,- hear the hooting owl which, as formerly, I at first mistook for the hounding of dog, a squealing sound followed by hoo hoo hoo deliberately, and particularly sonorous and ringing. This at 2 p. m. . . . .

The cowslips are well out, the first conspicuous herbaceous flower, for that of the skunk's-cabbage is concealed in its spathe.

April 9, 1855. 5 1/4 a. m. To red bridge just before sunrise. . . . . Hear the coarse, rasping cluck or chatter of crow blackbirds, and distinguished their long, broad tails. Wilson says that the only note of the rusty grackle is a