In the lane, after skirting some pleasant woods, which I meant to visit again, but found no opportunity, I was suddenly assaulted by a pair of brown thrashers, half beside themselves after their manner because of my approach to their nest.  How close my approach was I cannot say; but it must be confessed that I played upon their fears to the utmost of my ability, wishing to see as many of their neighbors as the disturbance would bring together.  Several other thrashers, a catbird, and two house wrens appeared (all these, since “blood is thicker than water,” may have felt some special cousinly solicitude, for aught I know), with a ruby-crowned kinglet and a field sparrow.

In the valley, near a little pond, as I came out into the Meridian road, a solitary vireo was singing, in the very spot where one had been heard six days before.  Was it the same bird?  I asked myself.  And was it settled for the summer?  Such an explanation seemed the more likely because I had found no solitary vireo anywhere else about the city, though the species had been common earlier in the season in eastern and southern Florida, where I had seen my last one—­at New Smyrna—­March 26.

At this same dip in the Meridian road, on a previous visit, I had experienced one of the pleasantest of my Tallahassee sensations.  The morning was one of those when every bird is in tune.  By the road side I had just passed Carolina wrens, house wrens, a chipper, a field sparrow, two thrashers, an abundance of chewinks, two orchard orioles, several tanagers, a flock of quail, and mocking-birds and cardinals uncounted.  In a pine wood near by, a wood pewee, a pine warbler, a yellow-throated warbler, and a pine-wood sparrow were singing—­a most peculiarly select and modest chorus.  Just at the lowest point in the valley I stopped to listen to a song which I did not recognize, but which, by and by, I settled upon as probably the work of a freakish prairie warbler.  At that moment, as if to confirm my conjecture,—­which in the retrospect becomes almost ridiculous,—­a prairie warbler hopped into sight on an outer twig of the water-oak out of which the music had proceeded.  Still something said, “Are you sure?” and I stepped inside the fence.  There on the ground were two or three white-crowned sparrows, and in an instant the truth of the case flashed upon me.  I remembered the saying of a friend, that the song of the white-crown had reminded him of the vesper sparrow and the black-throated green warbler.  That was my bird; and I listened again, though I could no longer be said to feel in doubt.  A long time I waited.  Again and again the birds sang, and at last I discovered one of them perched at the top of the oak, tossing back his head and warbling —­a white-crowned sparrow:  the one regular Massachusetts migrant which I had often seen, but had never heard utter a sound.