My walk on the railway, that wonderful St. Mark’s branch (I could never have imagined the possibility of running trains over so crazy a track), took me through the choicest of bird country.  The bushes were alive, and the air rang with music.  In the midst of the chorus I suddenly caught somewhere before me what I had no doubt was the song of a purple finch, a bird that I had not yet seen in Florida.  I quickened my steps, and to my delight the singer proved to be a blue grosbeak.  I had caught a glimpse of one two days before, as I have described in another chapter, but with no opportunity for a final identification.  Here, as it soon turned out, there were at least four birds, all males, and all singing; chasing each other about after the most persistent fashion, in a piece of close shrubbery with tall trees interspersed, and acting—­the four of them—­just as two birds are often seen to do when contending for the possession of a building site.  At a first hearing the song seems not so long sustained as the purple finch’s commonly is, but exceedingly like it in voice and manner, though not equal to it, I should be inclined to say, in either respect.  The birds made frequent use of a monosyllabic call, corresponding to the calls of the purple finch and the rose-breasted grosbeak, but readily distinguishable from both.  I was greatly pleased to see them, and thought them extremely handsome, with their dark blue plumage set off by wing patches of rich chestnut.

A little farther, and I was saluted by the saucy cry of my first Florida chat.  The fellow had chosen just such a tangled thicket as he favors in Massachusetts, and whistled and kept out of sight after the most approved manner of his kind.  On the other side of the track a white-eyed vireo was asserting himself, as he had been doing since the day I reached St. Augustine; but though he seems a pretty clever substitute for the chat in the chat’s absence, his light is quickly put out when the clown himself steps into the ring.  Ground doves cooed, cardinals whistled, and mocking-birds sang and mocked by turns.  Orchard orioles, no unworthy companions of mocking-birds and cardinals, sang here and there from a low treetop, especially in the vicinity of houses.  To judge from what I saw, they are among the most characteristic of Tallahassee birds,—­as numerous as Baltimore orioles are in Massachusetts towns, and frequenting much the same kind of places.  In one day’s walk I counted twenty-five.  Elegantly dressed as they are,—­and elegance is better than brilliancy, perhaps, even in a bird,—­they seem to be thoroughly democratic.  It was a pleasure to see them so fond of cabin door-yards.