Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/265

 to inspect you if you will but sit quietly in the region in which that "witchery" song is born out of the circumambient air.

Into the upper end of Chocorua Lake flows a brook of transparent water, fed by melting snows, out of "the heart of the mountain." Along this the song of the water thrush leads the wanderer from one limpid pool to another, a song that has in it some of the liquid prattle of the stream but more of a dominant, aggressive note that carries far. There is a touch of sunlight in the color of the water thrush's breast, sunlight flecked with little brown shadow markings that are like the uniform brown of his back, and if it were not that he sticks so closely to the water he might suggest the oven-bird to the careless glance. There is something of the song sparrow and the oven-bird at once in his song. It is as if the two birds had mated to produce him and the singing masters of both families had had the youngsters to singing school. Up this clear-water brook the oven-birds call you by way of the height of land, the water thrushes from pool to pool, while the sun drops behind Paugus in mid afternoon, and the blue