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Home  »  Prose Works  »  129. Birds and Birds and Birds

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Prose Works. 1892.

I. Specimen Days

129. Birds and Birds and Birds

A little later—bright weather.—AN UNUSUAL melodiousness, these days, (last of April and first of May) from the blackbirds; indeed all sorts of birds, darting, whistling, hopping or perch’d on trees. Never before have I seen, heard, or been in the midst of, and got so flooded and saturated with them and their performances, as this current month. Such oceans, such successions of them. Let me make a list of those I find here:

  • Black birds (plenty,)
  • Meadow-larks (plenty,)
  • Ring doves,
  • Cat-birds (plenty,)
  • Owls,
  • Cuckoos,
  • Woodpeckers,
  • Pond snipes (plenty,)
  • King-birds,
  • Cheewinks,
  • Crows (plenty,)
  • Quawks,
  • Wrens,
  • Ground robins,
  • Kingfishers,
  • Ravens,
  • Quails,
  • Gray snipes,
  • Turkey-buzzards,
  • Eagles,
  • Hen-hawks,
  • High-holes,
  • Yellow birds,
  • Herons,
  • Thrushes,
  • Tits,
  • Reed birds,
  • Woodpigeons.
  • Early came the

  • Blue birds,
  • Meadow lark,
  • Killdeer,
  • White-bellied swallow,
  • Plover,
  • Sandpiper,
  • Robin,
  • Wilson’s thrush.
  • Woodcock,
  • Flicker.