Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/235

Rh changes to a dark purplish tint as the cloud moves along. And then as I look further along eastward in the horizon, I am surprised to see strong purple and violet tinges in the sun from a hillside a mile off, densely covered with full-grown birches. I would not have believed that under the spring sun so many colors were brought out. It is not the willows only that shine, but, under favorable circumstances, many other twigs, even a mile or two off. The dense birches, so far that their white stems are not distinct, reflect deep, strong purple and violet colors from the distant hillsides opposite to the sun. Can this have to do with the sap flowing in them?

As we sit there, we see coming swift and straight northeast along the river valley, not seeing us and therefore not changing his course, a male goosander, so near that the green reflections of his head and neck are plainly visible. He looks like a paddle-wheel steamer, so oddly painted, black and white and green, and moves along swift and straight, like one. Ere long the same returns with his mate, the red-throated, the male taking the lead. The loud peop (?) of a pigeon woodpecker is heard, and anon the prolonged loud and shrill cackle calling the thin-wooded hillsides and pastures to life. It is like the note of an alarm clock set last fall so