The
birds, in a new but less holiday suit, turn their faces southward. The
swallows flock and go; the bobolinks flock and go; silently and
unobserved, the thrushes go. Autumn arrives, bringing finches,
warblers, sparrows, and kinglets from the north. Silently the
procession passes. Yonder hawk, sailing peacefully away till he is
lost in the horizon, is a symbol of the closing season and the
departing birds. 1863.
II
IN THE HEMLOCKS
Most people receive with incredulity a statement of the number of
birds that annually visit our climate. Very few even are aware of half
the number that spend the summer in their own immediate vicinity. We
little suspect, when we walk in the woods, whose privacy we are
intruding upon,--what rare and elegant visitants from Mexico, from
central and South America, and from the islands of the sea, are
holding their reunions in the branches over our heads, or pursuing
their pleasure on the ground before us.
I recall the altogether admirable and shining family which Thoreau
dreamed he saw in the upper chambers of Spaulding's woods, which
Spaulding did not know lived there, and which were not put out when
Spaulding, whistling, drove his team through their lower halls.
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