If I were not afraid of the ridicule of the cynic, I should begin this February chronicle with an exclamation of delight; but in these days, when so many of the so-called cultured class have taken for their motto, Nil admirari, one must try to repress one’s enthusiasm, or be scoffed at, or at least patronized, as young and inexperienced. Yet it would be out of the question for the genuine rambler to keep the valve constantly upon his buoyant feelings. If he did so, he would be wholly out of tune with the jubilant mood of bird and bloom and wave around him.

Almost every day of February, 1891, was a gala-day for me, on account of the large number of birds in song at that time. The weather was not always pleasant, but the month came in blandly, bringing on its gentle winds many birds from their southern winter-quarters; and as they had come, they made up their minds to stay. My notes begin with the eleventh of the month, and my narrative will begin with that date. In the evening I strolled out to my favorite swamp. On my arrival all was quiet; but soon the song-sparrows, seeing that a human auditor had come, broke into a jingling chorus. Early in the season as it was, they seemed to be almost in perfect voice, only a little of the hesitancy and twitter of their fall songs being distinguishable; nor did they seem to care for the raw evening wind blowing across the meadows, or the gray clouds scurrying athwart the sky, but kept up their canticles until the dusk fell.

Two days later, while sauntering through a woodland, I had the greatest surprise of the winter. For several years I had been studying the tree-sparrows, hoping to hear them sing, but only two or three times had my anxious quest been rewarded with even a wisp of melody from their lyrical throats. On this day, however, I came upon a whole colony of them in full tune, giving a concert that would have thrilled the most prosaic soul with poetry and romance. It was the first time I had ever really seen these birds while singing; but now, so kind was fortune, I could watch the movement of their mandibles, the swelling of their throats, and the heaving of their bosoms while they trilled their roundelays. My notes, taken on the spot, run as follows: “The song is somewhat crude and labored in technique; but the tones are very sweet indeed, not soft and low, as one author says, but quite loud and clear, so that they might be heard at some distance. The minstrelsy is more like that of the fox-sparrow than of any other sparrow, though the tones are finer and not so full and resonant. Quite often the song opens with one or two long syllables, and ends with a merry little trill having a delightfully human intonation. There is, indeed, something innocent and even childlike about the voices of these sparrows. Had they the song-sparrow’s skill in execution, they would rival that triller’s vocal performances. How many of them are taking part in the concert! They seem to be holding a song carnival to-day, and there is real witchery in their music. Frequently their songs are superimposed, as it were, upon the semi-musical chattering in which these birds so often indulge.”

But, strange to say, although the conditions were apparently in every respect favorable, I did not hear the song of a single tree-sparrow after that epochal day for more than a year. Evidently these birds are erratic songsters, at least in this latitude. On the same day the meadow-larks flung their flute-like songs athwart the fields, and the bold bugle of the Carolina wren echoed through the woods.

February 14. “In the swamp the song-sparrows are holding an opera festival,” my notes run. “One of them trills softly in a clump of wild-rose bushes, as if asking permission to sing; and then, his request being gladly granted, he leaps up boldly to a twig of a sapling, and breaks into a torrent of melody. Another, in precisely the same tune, answers him farther down the stream, the two executing a sort of fugue. A third leaps about on the dry grass that fringes a ditch, twitters merrily for a while, then flies to a small oak-tree near by, and—well, such a loud, rollicking, tempestuous song I have never before heard from a song-sparrow’s throat. Some of his tones are full and exultant, while others in the same run are low and tender, like the strains of a love-lorn harp. The tones produced by exhalation can be distinguished from those produced by inhalation. Sometimes his voice sounds a little hoarse, as if he had strained one of the strings of his lyre, but I find, on focusing my ear upon them, that these are some of his most melodious notes. Presently, in a fit of ecstasy, he hurls forth such a torrent of song, in allegro furioso, that one almost fancies the naiads and water-witches of the marsh are crying out for admiration.

“Here is something worthy of note—when the song-sparrow begins a trill, he usually sings it over a number of times, and then, as if wearied with one tune, turns to another; and yet with all his variations—and I know not how many he is capable of singing—there is always something distinctive about his minstrelsy that differentiates it from that of all other birds.”

February 17. “Again in the swamp. It seems to me I have never before heard the song-sparrows sing so gleefully. Every concert goes ahead of its predecessor. Here is a sparrow hopping about on the green grass among the bushes like a brown mouse; now he chirps sharply as if to attract my attention, and then bursts into a melody that almost makes me turn a somersault for very joy; and now, having sung his intermittent trills for a few minutes, he begins to warble a sweet, continuous lay, with an andante movement, as if he could not stop.