INTRODUCTORY. 13

“ Beautiful lJll'dS of lightsome wing, (ilad creatures that come with the voice of spring."

As birds migrate at night, we seldom see the winged armies on the march, but many a morning have we missed the thousands that the evening before crowded our hays or our woodlands. We always see the hrant migrate. If the weather is favorable, they leave the sixth or seventh of June regularly. Just before sundown the flocks become unusually restless and noisy. Then, while the summer sky is aglow with the setting sun, and evening sheds her calm beauty over land and sea, in one dense cloud the birds rise directly from the hay, and, hovering over its waters at a great height for a few moments, with the hoarse clamor of a thousand voices, they sweep away, and are

soon lost in the dimness of the northern sky.

In the early spring, during the period of mi— gration, on a calm, clear night, if you take your stand beneath the star-lit sky, where there is no other noise to disturb, you will hear the almost constant fanning of wings high in the scintillating heavens, as the birds sweep on silently in their

journey to their northern breeding grounds.

(a)