How close my approach was I cannot say; but it
must be confessed that I played upon their fears to the utmost of my
ability, wishing to see as many of their neighbors as the disturbance
would bring together. Several other thrashers, a catbird, and two house
wrens appeared (all these, since "blood is thicker than water," may have
felt some special cousinly solicitude, for aught I know), with a
ruby-crowned kinglet and a field sparrow.
In the valley, near a little pond, as I came out into the Meridian road,
a solitary vireo was singing, in the very spot where one had been heard
six days before. Was it the same bird? I asked myself. And was it
settled for the summer? Such an explanation seemed the more likely
because I had found no solitary vireo anywhere else about the city,
though the species had been common earlier in the season in eastern and
southern Florida, where I had seen my last one--at New Smyrna--March 26.
At this same dip in the Meridian road, on a previous visit, I had
experienced one of the pleasantest of my Tallahassee sensations. The
morning was one of those when every bird is in tune. By the road side I
had just passed Carolina wrens, house wrens, a chipper, a field sparrow,
two thrashers, an abundance of chewinks, two orchard orioles, several
tanagers, a flock of quail, and mocking-birds and cardinals uncounted.
In a pine wood near by, a wood pewee, a pine warbler, a yellow-throated
warbler, and a pine-wood sparrow were singing--a most peculiarly select
and modest chorus.
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