The most mischievous enemies of the cherries, however, here as at the North, are the cedar waxwings, or “cherry-birds.”  How quickly they spy out the tree!  Long before the cherry begins to turn, they are around, alert and cautious.  In small flocks they circle about, high in the air, uttering their fine note, or plunge quickly into the tops of remote trees.  Day by day they approach nearer and nearer, reconnoitring the premises, and watching the growing fruit.  Hardly have the green lobes turned a red cheek to the sun, before their beaks have scarred it.  At first they approach the tree stealthily, on the side turned from the house, diving quickly into the branches in ones and twos, while the main flock is ambushed in some shade tree not far off.  They are most apt to commit their depredations very early in the morning and on cloudy, rainy days.  As the cherries grow sweeter the birds grow bolder, till, from throwing tufts of grass, one has to throw stones in good earnest, or lose all his fruit.  In June they disappear, following the cherries to the north, where by July they are nesting in the orchards and cedar groves.

Among the permanent summer residents here (one might say city residents, as they seem more abundant in town than out), the yellow warbler or summer yellowbird is conspicuous.  He comes about the middle of April, and seems particularly attached to the silver poplars.  In every street, and all day long, one may hear his thin, sharp warble.  When nesting, the female comes about the yard, pecking at the clothes-line, and gathering up bits of thread to weave into her nest.

Swallows appear in Washington form the first to the middle of April.  They come twittering along in the way so familiar to every New England boy.  The barn swallow is heard first, followed in a day or two by the squeaking of the cliff swallow.  The chimney swallows, or swifts, are not far behind, and remain here in large numbers, the whole season.  The purple martins appear in April, as they pass north, and again in July and August on their return, accompanied by their young.

The national capital is situated in such a vast spread of wild, wooded, or semi-cultivated country and is in itself so open and spacious, with its parks and large government reservations, that an unusual number of birds find their way into it in the course of the season.  Rare warblers, as the black-poll, the yellow-poll, and the bay-breasted, pausing in May on their northward journey, pursue their insect game in the very heart of the town.

I have heard the veery thrush in the trees near the White House; and one rainy April morning, about six o’clock, he came and blew his soft, mellow flute in a pear-tree in my garden.  The tones had all the sweetness and wildness they have when heard in June in our deep northern forests.  A day or two afterward, in the same tree, I heard for the first time the song of the ruby-crowned wren, or kinglet,—­the same liquid bubble and cadence which characterize the