XIV
BIRDS OF CHOCORUA
Some May Songsters of the Frank Bolles Hinterland
To all who love the lore of woodland life the
country up around Chocorua lake and mountain
must always be haunted by the gentle spirit of
Frank Bolles, whose books, all too few, breathe
the very essence of its perennial charm. To
nature lovers who come year after year to the
place these books are a litany, and all the bird
songs are echoes of the notes he loved. Nor need
there be an hour of the twenty-four in this region,
in May, in which the birds do not sing. No
night is too dark for the wistful plaint of the
whip-poor-wills, wandering voices that seem born
of the loneliness of the bare places in the hills
before man was. To the wakeful ear their
sorrow hardly seems soothing, yet when drowsiness
comes from long days in the mountain air
the whip-poor-will's plaint is a primal, preadamite
