The common or wood pewee excites the most pleasant emotions, both on account of its plaintive note and its exquisite mossy nest.

The phoebe-bird is the pioneer of the flycatchers, and comes in April, sometimes in March.  Its comes familiarly about the house and outbuildings, and usually builds beneath hay-sheds or under bridges.

The flycatchers always take their insect prey on the wing, by a sudden darting or swooping movement; often a very audible snap of the beak may be heard.

These birds are the least elegant, both in form and color, of any of our feathered neighbors.  They have short legs, a short neck, large heads, and broad, flat beaks, with bristles at the base.  They often fly with a peculiar quivering movement of the wings, and when at rest some of the species oscillate their tails at short intervals.

There are found in the United States nineteen species.  In the Middle and Eastern districts, one may observe in summer, without any special search, about five of them, namely, the kingbird, the phoebe-bird, the wood pewee, the great crested flycatcher (distinguished from all others by the bright ferruginous color of its tail), and the small green-crested flycatcher.

The thrushes are the birds of real melody, and will afford one more delight perhaps than any other class.  The robin is the most familiar example.  Their manners, flight, and form are the same in each species.  See the robin hop along upon the ground, strike an attitude, scratch for a worm, fix his eye upon something before him or upon the beholder, flip his wings suspiciously, fly straight to his perch, or sit at sundown on some high branch caroling his sweet and honest strain, and you have seen what is characteristic of all the thrushes.  Their carriage is preeminently marked by grace, and their songs by melody.

Beside the robin, which is in no sense a woodbird, we have in New York the wood thrush, the hermit thrush, the veery, or Wilson’s thrush, the olive-backed thrush, and, transiently, one or two other species not so clearly defined.

The wood thrush and the hermit stand at the head as songsters, no two persons, perhaps, agreeing as to which is the superior.

Under the general head of finches, Audubon describes over sixty different birds, ranging from the sparrows to the grosbeaks, and including the buntings, the linnets, the snowbirds, the crossbills, and the redbirds.

We have nearly or quite a dozen varieties of the sparrow in the Atlantic States, but perhaps no more than half that number would be discriminated by the unprofessional observer.  The song sparrow, which every child knows, comes first; at least, his voice is first heard.  And can there be anything more fresh and pleasing than this first simple strain heard from the garden fence or a near hedge, on some bright, still March morning?