right, and the soft chipping of myrtle warblers is all but incessant. I
look up from my paper to see a turkey buzzard sailing majestically
northward. I watch him till he fades in the distance. Not once does he
flap his wings, but sails and sails, going with the wind, yet turning
again and again to rise against it,--helping himself thus to its
adverse, uplifting pressure in the place of wing-strokes, perhaps,--and
passing onward all the while in beautiful circles. He, too, scavenger
though he is, has a genius for being graceful. One might almost be
willing to be a buzzard, to fly like that!

The kingfisher and the heron are still at their posts. An exquisite
yellow butterfly, of a sort strange to my Yankee eyes, flits past,
followed by a red admiral. The marsh hawk is on the wing again, and
while looking at him I descry a second hawk, too far away to be made
out. Now the air behind me is dark with crows,--a hundred or two, at
least, circling over the low cedars. Some motive they have for all their
clamor, but it passes my owlish wisdom to guess what it can be. A fourth
blue heron appears, and drops into the grass out of sight.

Between my feet is a single blossom of the yellow oxalis, the only
flower to be seen; and very pretty it is, each petal with an orange spot
at the base.

Another buzzard, another marsh hawk, another yellow butterfly, and then
a smaller one, darker, almost orange. It passes too quickly over the
creek and away. The marsh hawk comes nearer, and I see the strong yellow
tinge of his plumage, especially underneath. He will grow handsomer as
he grows older. A pity the same could not be true of men. Behind me are
sharp cries of titlarks. From the direction of the river come frequent
reports of guns. Somebody is doing his best to be happy! All at once I