When I lived in the old Carriage House down in River Road, I used to count the birds as I passed the community garden, walked under the highway, and crossed through Tobin Hill and Monte Vista on my way to the office. House sparrows, grackles, cardinals, blue jays, and mockingbirds. Northern Mockingbirds can learn around 200 songs throughout their life, and, according to All About Birds, they “sing all through the day, and often into the night. Most nocturnal singers are unmated males, which sing more than mated males during the day, too.”

If the shoe fits.

The illustration is from Birdcraft : a field book of two hundred song, game, and water birds, featuring illustrations by a 25-year-old Louis Agassiz Fuertes. It’s available online thanks to the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Fuertes, when invited to accompany C Hart Merriam on an expedition, wrote to a friend that he was was “born with the itching foot, and the sight of a map — or even a time-table — is enough to stir me all up inside.”

“The whole world’s walking … “