He hears a familiar song,--one that he has often heard at a
distance, but never identified,--a loud, cheery, rustic cadence
sounding from a low pine-tree close beside him.  He looks up
carefully through the needles and discovers a hooded warbler, a
tiny, restless creature, dressed in green and yellow, with two white
feathers in its tail, like the ends of a sash, and a glossy little
black bonnet drawn closely about its golden head.  He will never
forget that song again.  It will make the woods seem homelike to
him, many a time, as he hears it ringing through the afternoon, like
the call of a small country girl playing at hide-and-seek: "See ME;
here I BE."

Another day he sits down on a mossy log beside a cold, trickling
spring to eat his lunch.  It has been a barren day for birds.
Perhaps he has fallen into the fault of pursuing his sport too
intensely, and tramped along the stream looking for nothing but
fish.  Perhaps this part of the grove has really been deserted by
its feathered inhabitants, scared away by a prowling hawk or driven
out by nest-hunters.  But now, without notice, the luck changes.  A
surprise-party of redstarts breaks into full play around him.  All
through the dark-green shadow of the hemlocks they flash like little
candles--CANDELITAS, the Cubans call them.  Their brilliant markings
of orange and black, and their fluttering, airy, graceful movements,
make them most welcome visitors.  There is no bird in the bush
easier to recognize or pleasanter to watch.  They run along the
branches and dart and tumble through the air in fearless chase of
invisible flies and moths.  All the time they keep unfolding and
furling their rounded tails, spreading them out and waving them and
closing them suddenly, just as the Cuban girls manage their fans.
In fact, the redstarts are the tiny fantail pigeons of the forest.