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Updated: May 19, 2025
In May the principal birds of our neighbourhood will return thrushes, vireos, tanagers, grosbeaks, bobolinks, orioles. The game birds quail, partridge, meadowlarks and pheasants do not migrate as a rule. At least they do not disappear for a time and then return. When they leave a neighbourhood, they rarely come back to it. All the song birds begin nesting in May.
In spring mornings the blackbirds and bobolinks made them musical with songs; and in the evenings great bullfrogs croaked and clamored; and on summer nights we loved to watch the white wreaths of fog rising and drifting in the moonlight like troops of ghosts, with the fireflies throwing up ever and anon signals of their coming.
We never became so intimately acquainted with the bobolinks as with the thrushes, for they lived far out on the broad Fox River meadows, while the thrushes sang on the tree-tops around every home.
I suppose that these mournful strains had their place, but sometimes the transition was too sudden, from the outside of the meeting-house to the inside; from the sunshine and bobolinks and buttercups of the merry May-day world, to the sad strains that chanted of "this barren land," this "vale of tears," this "wilderness" of distress and woe.
What a time they are having thrush, bobolinks, blackbirds, nightingales, woodpeckers, little pee-wees, all fluttering, skimming, chirping; bursting their tiny throats for the very joy of living.
Every step of the way was a pleasure to the newcomer; the sky was dazzling and unclouded, the air was intoxicating with the scent of clover, and the tinkling music of the bobolinks sounded as though all the fairies on the Oro hills were setting out their tiny cups and saucers for a banquet.
In half an hour the children were back again, all talking eagerly together. "The Redwings scolded us like everything!" said Dodo, "and Rap stepped right into an empty Meadow-lark's nest, without seeing it. A little way back there are lots of Bobolinks, too, singing and singing, but we couldn't find a single nest."
Down hill-sides overhung with tasselled chestnut-boughs; through pine-woods where neither horse nor wagon intruded any noise of hoof or wheel upon the odorous silence, as we rolled over the sand, past green meadows, and sloping orchards; over little bright brooks that chattered musically to the bobolinks on the fence-posts, and were echoed by those sacerdotal gentlemen in such liquid, bubbling, rollicking, uproarious bursts of singing as made one think of Anacreon's grasshopper
At last there came a time when Bobby though he was just as happy seemed to have less leisure for singing. And then it was easy for the neighbors to guess the reason for that, because it was plain that the Bobolink family was not gathering great numbers of grasshoppers and caterpillars merely for the fun of it. Hidden as the little Bobolinks were in the tall grass, no stranger found them.
But the snipes and plover had gone into a decline, the orioles and ovenbirds had grown thin and unkempt, and the bobolinks and meadow-larks had eaten themselves to death. Sorrowful over so much misfortune, she had longed to secure a hardy bird that would not only live in captivity, but would repay her loving care with songs. The young cowbird proved to be just what she had wanted.
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