cloak, that attract far too much attention, and wears her shabby working dress. So, if you see the tanager in his dress of flame and soot at all, it must be in the spring or early summer.
GOLDFINCH
"Tweet, tweet, twitter, twitter, tweet!" Haven't you heard that often from roadside weeds, where dandelions and thistles have gone to seed? No, it isn't the speckled song-sparrow of the low bushes. It is a little black and yellow cousin of his—the gold-finch, or wild canary. Canary yellow with black wings and tail, he flies as a little canoe rides the water. Such a playful, sweet-tempered, "tweet, twittering" little fellow he is. He seems to waste half the summer idling, but he is really waiting for those downy weed seeds to line his pretty nest and to feed his babies.
The finest singers of America are thrushes, blackbirds and finches. The finches all have the canary twittering songs; the blackbirds the whistling, bubbling notes. The songs of the thrushes are pure rich melody, and many of them mock the songs of the warblers, the finches and the blackbirds. Another twittering finch is the snow-white and dead-black, short-billed grosbeak, with the patches of lovely rose color on the breast and under the wings. The cardinal grosbeak, or Virginia nightingale, is a finch, too, His voice is so fine that this ruby-coated and crested singer is often caged, as is his cousin the canary.
The eaves of the doctor's barn was a great place for swallows. A big colony of them skimmed and wheeled about, the sun glistening on their blue-black forked wings and tails. They chattered, scolded intruders, and sang sweet gossipy songs to each other. The wrens came right up to the house and sang from the roof, the low bushes and the ground. Bill up, perky tail jerking about, this merry singer is a nervous little scold at times. "Five inches of brown fury in feathers," the doctor called Mrs. Jennie Wren. She scolded the house
