Never sweeter than now, after the long silence of winter, do the birds' songs sound, and never in all the round of the year is there a better time to see them than when the gray haze of the branches is the only hiding for their gay wedding garments.

If you would try your skill at still-hunting, follow up that muffled roll that throbs through the woods, and if you discover the ruffed grouse strutting upon his favorite log, and undiscovered by him can watch his proud performance, you will have done something better worth boasting of than bringing him to earth from his hurtling flight.

Out of the distant fields come, sweet and faint, the call of the meadowlark and the gurgle of the blackbirds that throng the brookside elms. From high[31] overhead come down the clarion note of the goose, the sibilant beat of the wild ducks' wings, the bleat of t. . . Read More