American Ornithology, Vol. 4

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Excerpt from American Ornithology, Vol. 4: For the Home and School I've been sitting here in the watch tower for over an hour, watching the daylight die out over the glistening snow fields, the far blue hills and the near green pines. Masses of purple and pale lilac clouds have drifted into the west, glowed warmest red and softest pink, and faded slowly back to purple and lilac gray. I think of Elizabeth and her peonies and lilac and the spring days that "seemed to melt away into a dream of pink and purple peace." For this has been the third day of spring, in spite of the calendar. In spite of the Calendars, I might say, for I sat this afternoon in a room with no less than seven of these monitors of the flight of time, each one declaring with more of less vociferousness that as the month was February, it must be winter. But a calendar in an insentient, dull affair of paper and ink, while I am a sentient being, and I felt the Spring begin Saturday. For a week there had been a vague intermittent hints of a change. A difference in the early morning look of the sky, something changed in the mists that hung over the river at mid day, and two or three times at sunset a pink flush over the maple grove on the Rolway that spoke of swelling buds. On Thursday, taking a walk over the North Hill, I found the crust quite strong and walked wherever my fancy led, on Friday the sun shone brightly all day, and on Saturday the Spring came. On that day I went for a walk over through Burwell's Grove and out on the road beyond, and found the snowbanks so much reduced, not so much in depth as in bearing qualities, that it behooved me to walk the straight and narrow way. Several times I proved the inadvisability of trying any adventurous journeys cross lots and finally gave up, going out of the road only where some particularly promising branch grew quite uncompromisingly to the right or left. I wanted a bundle of whips, pussy willows and dogwood preferably, but anything that looked growable finally, so I wandered along looking for twigs with swelling buds and listening for birds. Once, faint and far off among the hemlocks, I heard a "Chick-a-dee-dee, " and twice, from among the beeches where the snow forbade my going, a nuthatch called "Yank-yank-yank, " and these were the only sounds I heard until I was well up the hill, when a faint tapping made me look into an oak tree just a few yards away and there was a Downy Woodpecker just beginning to hunt for his supper. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.