Nature's invitation: Notes of a bird-gazer, North and South

Of the chapters here brought together the two longest, the first and the last, are reprinted from the “Atlantic Monthly.” The others were originally contributed, by way of weekl...

Somewhere between the third and fourth mileboards I stopped short with an exclamation. There, straight before me, over the long eastern shoulder of Moosilauke, beyond the big Jo...

It is a strange place, the Summit House. Twice a day, as on the seashore, the tide rises and falls. But the evening flood is a small affair. The crowd comes at noon. It register...

The road is bordered with the dead tops of trees, thrown there in heaps by the road-makers. They form an unsightly hedge, which birds of various kinds resort to for cover. At th...

And while I am talking of bluebirds I ought to mention their habit of hanging about bird boxes in these last days of their Northern season. Only this forenoon, since the foregoi...

And yes, here is a tree that I knew would excite my companion’s curiosity. No stranger ever drove over this road (and the first drive of every newcomer to Miami is taken this wa...

For the first mile or so--as far as the tide runs, perhaps--the river is densely beset on either side by a shining green hedge of mangrove bushes, every branch sending down “aer...

But at Ormond a man may not only walk, he may drive; and this forenoon (March 19) a pair of horses have taken me over such a road as I do not expect soon to find the like of, ei...

He is like a certain Maine farmer of whom I have heard, a plain tiller of the soil, who feels, nevertheless, that he was born for better things; not for a cart-horse, if you ple...

All this while, it must be understood, there was always the possibility that the train might start at any moment, no positive information upon that point being obtainable, so th...

I have never known a city more orderly seeming, more evidently peaceful and law-abiding than Tucson. Nowhere have I felt safer in wandering about by myself in all sorts of place...

Perhaps it was because of the earliness of the hour, though the sun was well above the horizon; at any rate, I had gone but a short distance before my steps were arrested by the...

I spoke a month ago of my ornithological predicament when, newly arrived in Texas, I found myself surrounded by a quite strange set of birds. I was back in the primer, I think I...

And now, to my intense satisfaction, I found that they were doing just what the handbook described: springing into the air for a few feet, after the manner of long-billed marsh...

My mention just now of the wren’s cleverness in traveling over the steep side of Tucson Mountain called to mind a similar performance on the part of a very different bird--a roa...