The sounds of wind and water are the same everywhere. Here at the heart of
the city I can forget the tarry pebbles and painted tin whenever my
rain-pipes are flooded. I can never be wholly shut away from the open
country and the trees so long as the winds draw hard down the alley past
my window.

But I have more than a window and a broken rain-pipe. Along with my five
flights goes a piece of roof, flat, with a wooden floor, a fence, and a
million acres of sky. I couldn't possibly use another acre of sky, except
along the eastern horizon, where the top floors of some twelve-story
buildings intercept the dawn.

With such a roof and such a sky, when I must, I can, with effort, get well
out of the city. I have never fished nor botanized here, but I have been
a-birding many times.

Stone walls do not a prison make,

nor city streets a cage--if one have a roof.

A roof is not an ideal spot for bird study. I would hardly, out of
preference, have chosen this with its soot and its battlement of gaseous
chimney-pots, even though it is a university roof with the great gilded
dome of a state house shining down upon it. One whose feet have always
been in the soil does not take kindly to tar and tin. But anything open to
the sky is open to some of the birds, for the paths of many of the
migrants lie close along the clouds.

Other birds than the passing migrants, however, sometimes come within