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Updated: May 19, 2025
That nest prospered, as bobolinks' nests doubtless generally do; for, notwithstanding the enormous slaughter of the birds during their fall migrations by Southern sportsmen, the bobolink appears to hold its own, and its music does not diminish in our Northern meadows.
Then he will be changed to dull brown like his wife, and keep as quiet as poor Cinderella sitting in the ashes. "Do you see any birds in that meadow of long grass?" asked the Doctor. "I don't see any in the grass," said Rap; "but there are some Bobolinks all about in the trees along the edges, and more of them up in the air. Where are their nests, Doctor? I've never found a Bobolink's nest!"
The bobolinks were fluting from every tree; there were thrushes in the alder bushes and orioles in the tops of the elms, and Waitstill's heart overflowed with joy at being in such a world of midsummer beauty, though life, during the great heat and incessant work of haying-time, was a little more rigorous than usual.
A field of ruddy, blooming clover, dashed or sprinkled here and there with the snow-white of the daisies; its breath drifts into the road when you are passing; you hear the boom of bees, the voice of bobolinks, the twitter of swallows, the whistle of woodchucks; you smell wild strawberries; you see the cattle upon the hills; you see your youth, the youth of a happy farm-boy, rise before you.
One on "Butter-Making," of which I will quote the opening passage, fairly makes the mouth water: With green grass comes golden butter. With the bobolinks and the swallows, with singing groves, and musical winds, with June, ah, yes! with tender, succulent, gorgeous June, all things are blessed. The dairyman's heart rejoices, and the butter tray with its virgin treasure becomes a sight to behold.
All the way along, bobolinks, canaries, and song-sparrows had been singing to her, the swallows and red-throats had been talking; everywhere among the soft spongy mosses, the singing frog of the Canadian spring had been filling the air with its one soft whistling note. Zilda had not heard them, but now she stopped suddenly with head bent, listening eager, enraptured.
Nearly every May I am seized with an impulse to go back to the scenes of my youth, and hear the bobolinks in the home meadows once more. I am sure they sing there better than anywhere else. They probably drink nothing but dew, and the dew distilled in those high pastoral regions has surprising virtues. It gives a clear, full, vibrant quality to the birds' voices that I have never heard elsewhere.
The bobolinks are generally chance visitors, tinkling through the garden in blossoming-time, but this year, owing to the long rains early in the season, their favorite meadows were flooded, and they were driven to the upland. So I had a pair of them domiciled in my grass field.
I had come fresh from my still country meadow and mountain, my own trees and my own bobolinks and my own little island of sky up over me, and in the vast and desolate solitude of men and women I wandered about up and down the streets. Every block I saw, every window, skyline, engine, street-car, every human face, made me feel as if I belonged to another world.
The bobolinks were among the first of our great singers to leave us in the fall, going apparently direct to the rice-fields of the Southern States, where they grew fat and were slaughtered in countless numbers for food. Sad fate for singers so purely divine. One of the gayest of the singers is the redwing blackbird.
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