Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/164

 buds, all yellowed with the pollen from drooping catkins. The swamp willows that had lost their leaves are beginning to put them out again. So on oak trees I find the straggly catkins hanging in tassels where the limbs are gray with new leaf buds that are pushing off last year's leaves. And still the blue jays are searching among these catkins for acorns of last year, not altogether unsuccessfully, so close does spring tread on the heels of the old year and its fruits. All about in the fields I hear a springlike twittering among the myriad birds, a preliminary tuning of instruments. I hear the friendly "cochituate" of a goldfinch as he scallops his way along the sky. The Florida blue jays, even noisier than our Northern ones and vastly more familiar, clang and scream all about and red birds whistle musically. Through all this I hear another note, or rather a succession of notes, that make me smile. I have been stalking this puzzling, strange song, if one can call it that, for a day or two, as opportunity offered, and only this morning made sure. After all, it was only the crow blackbird trying to sing a spring song. As a song it is hardly a success. It begins with a shrill, hardly musical, call note, long repeated. Then the bird essays something like the trill of a canary, though not very much like it in result. Then he gives a little deprecatory chirp as if he were as much