drafty mountain hut

I hear the note of the shy Savannah sparrow (F.Savanna), that plump bird with a dark-streaked breast that runs and hides in the grass, whose note sounds so like a cricket’s in the grass. (I used to hear itwhen I walked by moonlight last sum mer.) I hear it now from deep in the sod, — for there is hardly grass yet. The bird keeps so low you do not see it. You do not suspect how many there are till at length their heads appear. The word seringo reminds me of its note, — as if it were produced by some kind of fine metallic spring. It is an earth-sound. It is a moist, lowering morning for the mayers.

from the journals of Henry David Thoreau