slap of its tail. I feel pretty sure that this is an involuntary movement, the tail, by the sudden turn of the body, being brought down on the water or ice like a whip-lash.
March 5, 1859. Going down town this A. M. I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. There was a chickadee close by to which it may have been addressed. It was something like “To-what what what what what” rapidly repeated, and not the usual “quah quah.” And this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear and have referred to a wood-pecker! This is before I have chanced to see a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this year. It is the spring note of the nuthatch. It paused in its progress about the trunk or branch, and uttered this lively but peculiarly inarticulate song, an awkward attempt to warble almost in the face of the chickadee, as if it were one of its kind. It was thus giving vent to the spring within it. If I am not mistaken, this is what I have heard in former springs or winters long ago, fabulously early in the season, when we men had but just begun to anticipate the spring, for it would seem that we in our anticipations and sympathies include in succession the moods and ex-
