The speckled Canada is a very superior warbler, having a lively, animated strain, reminding you of certain parts of the canary’s, though quite broken and incomplete; the bird, the while, hopping amid the branches with increased liveliness, and indulging in fine sibilant chirps, too happy to keep silent.

His manners are quite marked.  He has a habit of courtesying when he discovers you which is very pretty.  In form he is an elegant bird, somewhat slender, his back of a bluish lead-color becoming nearly black on his crown:  the under part of his body, from his throat down, is of a light, delicate yellow, with a belt of black dots across his breast.  He has a fine eye, surrounded by a light yellow ring.

The parent birds are much disturbed by my presence, and keep up a loud emphatic chirping, which attracts the attention of their sympathetic neighbors, and one after another they come to see what has happened.  The chestnut-sided and the Blackburnian come in company.  The black and yellow warbler pauses a moment and hastens away; the Maryland yellow-throat peeps shyly from the lower bushes and utters his “Fip! fip!” in sympathy; the wood pewee comes straight to the tree overhead, and the red-eyed vireo lingers and lingers, eying me with a curious, innocent look, evidently much puzzled.  But all disappear again, one by one, apparently without a word of condolence or encouragement to the distressed pair.  I have often noticed among birds this show of sympathy,—­if indeed it be sympathy, and not merely curiosity, or desire to be forewarned of the approach of a common danger.

An hour afterward I approach the place, find all still, and the mother bird upon the nest.  As I draw near she seems to sit closer, her eyes growing large with an inexpressibly wild, beautiful look.  She keeps her place till I am within two paces of her, when she flutters away as at first.  In the brief interval the remaining egg has hatched, and the two little nestlings lift their heads without being jostled or overreached by any strange bedfellow.  A week afterward and they were flown away,—­so brief is the infancy of birds.  And the wonder is that they escape, even for this short time, the skunks and minks and muskrats that abound here, and that have a decided partiality for such tidbits.

I pass on through the old Barkpeeling, now threading an obscure cow-path or an overgrown wood-road; now clambering over soft and decayed logs, or forcing my way through a network of briers and hazels; now entering a perfect bower of wild cherry, beech, and soft maple; now emerging into a little grassy lane, golden with buttercups or white with daisies, or wading waist-deep in the red raspberry-bushes.

Whir! whir! whir! and a brood of half-grown partridges start up like an explosion, a few paces from me, and, scattering, disappear in the bushes on all sides.  Let me sit down here behind the screen of ferns and briers, and hear this wild hen of the woods call together her brood.  At what an early age the partridge flies!  Nature seems to concentrate her energies on the wing, making the safety of the bird a point to be looked after first; and while the body is covered with down, and no signs of feathers are visible, the wing-quills sprout and unfold, and in an incredibly short time the young make fair headway in flying.