Journal of First Class at The Clearing in Door County, Wisconsin 1957
October 11, 2015
May 22. Wednesday
Morning broke, ecstatic with sunshine and bright with bird-song. The trees swarmed! Where there had been but two kinds of warblers the day before, we now found nineteen species, all singing, flitting, flashing. The sun warmed them as they hunted food to refuel their depleted energy after a night of flying.
We walked leisurely along the lane, drinking in the miracle the night had brought. There were scarlet tanagers like tropical birds blown far out of their course. There were indigo buntings and goldfinches, purple finches and crested flycatchers. The wood thrush had been chiming before dawn and sang most of the morning. There were waxwings in the apple trees and vireos in the aspens . . . and all those warblers!
Mrs. Larkin conducted the entire group on a bird hike all that morning. In the afternoon we piled into cars and drove over to Bailey’s Harbor and up to Miss Emma Toft’s wonderful wilderness where we found little pink primroses Primula mistasinnica growing charmingly out of the rocks. Two bald eagles came over the bay and circled back and forth majestically above us. One was in full adult plumage, the other a younger bird with no white on head or tail.