I had been taken unawares, and every
ornithologist knows how hard it is to be sure of one's self in such a
case. He knows, too, how uncertain he feels of any brother observer who
in a similar case seems troubled by no distrust of his own senses. The
whistle, whatever it had been, was not repeated, and I lost my only
opportunity of adding the sora's name to my Florida catalogue--a loss,
fortunately, of no consequence to any but myself, since the bird is well
known as a winter visitor to the State.
Further along, a great blue heron was stalking about the edge of a
marshy pool, and further still, in a woody swamp, stood three little
blue herons, one of them in white plumage. In the drier and more open
parts of the way cardinals, mocking-birds, and thrashers were singing,
ground doves were cooing, quails were prophesying, and loggerhead
shrikes sat, trim and silent, on the telegraph wire. In the pine lands
were plenty of brown-headed nuthatches, full, as always, of friendly
gossip; two red-shouldered hawks, for whom life seemed to wear a more
serious aspect; three Maryland yellow throats; a pair of bluebirds, rare
enough now to be twice welcome; a black-and-white creeper, and a yellow
redpoll warbler. In the same pine woods, too, there was much good music:
house wrens, Carolina wrens, red-eyed and white-eyed vireos, pine
warblers, yellow-throated warblers, blue yellowbacks, red-eyed chewinks,
and, twice welcome, like the bluebirds, a Carolina chickadee.
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