Here a partridge has set its foot; there, a woodcock; here,
a squirrel or mink; thee, a skunk; there, a fox. What a clear, nervous
track reynard makes! how easy to distinguish it from that of a little
dog,--it is so sharply cut and defined! A dog's track is coarse and
clumsy beside it. There is as much wildness in the track of an animal
as in its voice. Is a deer's track like a sheep's or a goat's? What
winged-footed fleetness and agility may be inferred from the sharp,
braided track of the gray squirrel upon the new snow! Ah! in nature is
the best discipline. How wood-life sharpens the senses, giving a new
power to the eye, the ear, the nose! And are not the rarest and most
exquisite songsters wood-birds?
Everywhere in these solitudes I am greeted with the pensive, almost
pathetic not of the wood pewee. The pewees are the true flycatchers,
and are easily identified. They are very characteristic birds, have
strong family traits and pugnacious dispositions. They are the least
attractive or elegant birds of our fields or forests.
Sharp-shouldered, big-headed, short-legged, of no particular color, of
little elegance in flight or movement, with a disagreeable flirt of
the tail, always quarreling with their neighbors and with one another,
no birds are so little calculated to excite pleasurable emotions in
the beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection.
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