Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/249

Rh ing some roadside maples when the voice was heard anew, and the two birds, both calling, mounted into the air and vanished beyond the wood northward.

What a sweet voice the bluebird's is! Calling or singing, it is the very soul of music. And the spring was really open. I went home in high spirits.

This happened on the 10th. Now it is the 13th. I have seen no more bluebirds, and song sparrows are still missing; but this morning an ecstatic purple finch warbled, and better still (for somehow, I do not know how or why, it gave me more pleasure), a flicker called again and again in his loud, peremptory, long-winded manner. He, or another like him, has been in the neighborhood all winter, but this was his first spring utterance. It was no uncertain sound.

The bluebird peeps in upon us, as it were. His air is timid. "Is winter really gone?" he seems to say; but the flicker is a breezier customer. His mood is positive. He pushes the door wide open, and slams it back against the wall. "Spring, spring!" he shouts, and