There is a
Southern species, heard when you have reached the Potomac, whose
note is far more harsh and crackling. To stand on the verge of a
swamp vocal with these, pains and stuns the ear. The call of the
Northern species is far more tender and musical. [Footnote: The
Southern species is called the green hyla. I have since heard them
in my neighborhood on the Hudson.]
Then is there anything like a perfect April morning? One hardly
knows what the sentiment of it is, but it is something very
delicious. It is youth and hope. It is a new earth and a new sky.
How the air transmits sounds, and what an awakening, prophetic
character all sounds have! The distant barking of a dog, or the
lowing of a cow, or the crowing of a cock, seems from out the heart
of Nature, and to be a call to come forth. The great sun appears to
have been reburnished, and there is something in his first glance
above the eastern hills, and the way his eye-beams dart right and
left and smite the rugged mountains into gold, that quickens the
pulse and inspires the heart.
Across the fields in the early morning I hear some of the rare
April birds,--the chewink and the brown thrasher. The robin, the
bluebird, the song sparrow, the phoebe-bird, come in March; but
these two ground-birds are seldom heard till toward the last of
April. The ground-birds are all tree-singers or air-singers; they
must have an elevated stage to speak from. Our long-tailed thrush,
or thrasher, like its congeners the catbird and the mockingbird,
delights in a high branch of some solitary tree, whence it will
pour out its rich and intricate warble for an hour together.
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