Page:Wild folk - Samuel Scoville.djvu/105

Rh and were calling back and forth heartening each other as they flew through the long dark hours. Against the golden disc of the rising moon a continuous procession of tiny black figures showed the whole sky to be full of these pilgrims from the north. The "chink, chink" of the bobolinks dropped through the stillness like silver coins; and from higher up came the "tsip, tsip, tsip" of the black-poll warblers, all the way from the Magdalen Islands. With them were a score or so of others of the great warbler family. Black-throated blues, Cape Mays, redstarts, golden-wings, yellow warblers, black-throated greens, magnolias, myrtles, and tiny parulas—myriads of this many-colored family were traveling together through the sky. With them went the vireos, the orioles, the tanagers, and four different kinds of thrushes, with a dozen or so other varieties of birds following.

Most of them had put on their traveling clothes for the long journey. The tanagers had laid aside their crimson and black, and wore yellowish-green suits. The indigo bird had lost his vivid blue, the rose stain of the rose-breasted grosbeak was gone, along with the white cheeks of the black-poll warbler and the black throat of the black-throated green, while the bobolinks wore sober coats of olive-buff streaked with black, in place of their cream-white and velvet black.

Once during the night, as the army crossed an Atlantic cape, a lighthouse flashed its fatal eye at them. Immediately the ranks of the flyers broke,