Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/239

Rh see any reason in the nature of things why female birds should not have musical susceptibilities and musical accomplishments; but I am constrained to doubt. It is most likely, I think, that the opinion has arisen from the fact that adult males—a year or more old, and fathers of families—sometimes continue to wear the gray, sparrow-like costume of the gentler sex.

My bird of this morning dropped from his perch while I was trying to get nearer to him, and could not be found again. I still suppose that the flock is spending the season somewhere not far off. I have lived with myself too long to imagine that birds must be absent because I fail to discover them.

Half an hour before, in almost the same place, I had stopped to look at six birds perched in a bare treetop. They were so silent, so motionless, and so closely bunched, that I put up my opera-glass expecting to find them cedar waxwings. Instead, they were nothing but blue jays. While my glass was still on them, the whole flock seemed to be taken with a dancing fit. This lasted for a quarter of a second, more or less, and was