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Glad as I was to see this lowly acquaintance back again after his seven months' absence, and natural as he looked on the edge of Warbler Swamp, bobbing along the branches in his own unique, end-for-end fashion, there was no resisting a sensation of disappointment. Why could not the wood thrush have been punctual? He would have made the woods ring with an ode worthy of the festival.
I also noted the Canada warbler, the chestnut-sided warbler, and the black-throated blue-back, the latter most abundant of all. Up these mountain brooks, too, goes the belted kingfisher, swooping around through the woods when he spies the fisherman, then wheeling into the open space of the stream and literally making a "blue streak" down under the branches.
The little fellow's brown body, scarcely larger than a butternut, was swelling up like a round ball in his effort to vanquish all other song. "Go to it, old man," chuckled Carrigan. "Go to it!" The little warbler, that he might have crushed between thumb and forefinger, gave him a lot of courage. Then the tiny chorister stopped for breath.
Mark that slender, graceful, yellow warbler, running along the high oak boughs like a perturbed spirit, seeking restlessly, anxiously, something which he seems never to find; and uttering every now and then a long anxious cry, four or five times repeated, which would be a squeal, were it not so sweet.
I have never seen the nearly-allied and very similar Marsh Warbler, Acrocephalus palustris, in Guernsey, but, as it may occasionally occur, it may be as well perhaps to point out what little distinction there is between the species.
It was probably the blue yellow-backed warbler, as I have since found this to be a common bird in those woods; but to my young fancy it seemed like some fairy bird, so unexpected. I saw it a moment as the flickering leaves parted, noted the white spot on its wing, and it was gone. How the thought of it clung to me afterward! It was a revelation.
The cedar and balsam shelter dripped with morning dew, the place where fire had been was black and dead, and ruffling his feathers the warbler continued his song in triumph. Nada, hidden under her shelter, and still half dreaming, heard him. She lay with her head nestled in the crook of Roger's arm, and the birdsong seemed to come to her from a great distance away.
The little fists lashed out. "Bah! Who could ev-er dream that he'd turn out such a 'chuff', as the boys say an un-civ-il chuff?... Una! it's never it isn't, it can't be Camp Fire Girls?" "It is! It is! I told you I heard singing." The answer was shrill with delight as the wiry note of the little black-poll warbler, nesting near. "Why! Why! Goodness!
"Fighting Hal" was no gentle warbler of thought. Vehement, direct, indifferent, he swept through all polite argument as a strong wind through a murmuring wood, carrying his partisans with him further than they meant to go, and quite unable to turn back; leaving his opponents clinging desperately upside down, anyhow to their perches, angry, their feathers much ruffled.
At present he is not the youngest anything, except, according to himself 'the youngest failure in advertising, but a book of nakedly youthful love-poetry, which in gloomy moments he wishes had never been written, although the San Francisco Warbler called it as 'tensely vital as the Shropshire Lad, brought him several column reviews and very nearly forty dollars in cash at twenty-one and since then many people of his own age and one or two editors have considered him "worth watching."
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