experience of others may have been, but the only bird I have ever
hard sing in the night has been the chip-bird. I should say he sang
about as often during the darkness as cocks crow. One can hardly
help fancying that he sings in his dreams.

"Father of light, what sunnie seed,
What glance of day hast thou confined
Into this bird? To all the breed
This busie ray thou hast assigned;
Their magnetism works all night,
And dreams of Paradise and light."

On second thought, I remember to have heard the cuckoo strike the
hours nearly all night with the regularity of a Swiss clock.

The dead limbs of our elms, which I spare to that end, bring us
the flicker every summer, and almost daily I hear his wild scream
and laugh close at hand, himself invisible. He is a shy bird, but a
few days ago I had the satisfaction of studying him through the
blinds as he sat on a tree within a few feet of me. Seen so near and
at rest, he makes good his claim to the title of pigeon-woodpecker.
Lumberers have a notion that he is harmful to timber, digging little
holes through the bark to encourage the settlement of insects. The
regular rings of such perforations which one may see in almost any
apple-orchard seem to give some probability to this theory. Almost
every season a solitary quail visits us, and, unseen among the
currant bushes, alls *Bob White, Bob White,* as if he were playing
at hide-and-seek with that imaginary being. A rarer visitant is the
turtle-dove, whose pleasant coo (something like the muffled crow
of a cock from a coop covered with snow) I have sometimes heard,