with exactness, will deceive Mistress Pullet herself.

To carry the idea further, we will take the notes of some of the birds depicted in this number of Birds. The Osprey, or Fish-Hawk, has been carefully observed, and his only discovered note is a high, rapidly repeated whistle, very plaintive. Doubtless this noise is agreeable and intelligible to his mate, but cannot be called a song, and has no significance to the listener.

The Vulture utters a low, hissing sound when disturbed. This is its only note. Not so with the Bald Eagle, whose scream emulates the rage of the tempest, and implies courage, the quality which associates him with patriotism and freedom. In the notes of the Partridge there is a meaning recognizable by every one. After the nesting season, when the birds are in bevies, their notes are changed to what sportsmen term “scatter calls.” Not long after a bevy has been flushed, and perhaps widely scattered, the members of the disunited family may be heard signaling to one another in sweet minor calls of two and three notes, and in excitement, they utter low, twittering notes.

Of the Sora Rails, Mr. Chapman says, “knowing their calls, you have only to pass a May or June evening near a marsh to learn whether they inhabit it. If there, they will greet you late in the afternoon with a clear whistled ker-wee, which soon comes from dozens of invisible birds about you, and long after night has fallen, it continues like a springtime chorus of piping hylas. Now and again it is interrupted by a high-voiced, rolling whinney, which, like a call of alarm, is taken up and repeated by different birds all over the marsh.”

Poor Red-Breasted Merganser! He has only one note, a croak. Perhaps it was of him that Bryant was thinking when he wrote the stanzas “To a Water-Fowl.”

“The sentiment of feeling awakened by any of the aquatic fowls is pre-eminently one of loneliness,” says John Burroughs. “The Wood Duck (see July Birds) which you approach, starts from the pond or the marsh, the Loon neighing down out of the April sky, the Wild Goose, the Curlew, the Stork, the Bittern, the Sandpiper, etc., awaken quite a different train of emotions from those awakened by the land birds. They all have clinging to them some reminiscence and suggestion of the sea. Their cries echo its wildness and desolation; their wings are the shape of its billows.”

But the Evening Grosbeak, the Kentucky Warbler, the Skylark, land birds all, are singers. They have music in their throats and in their souls, though of varying quality. The Grosbeak’s note is described by different observers as a shrill cheepy tee and a frog-like peep, while one writer remarks that the males have a single metallic cry like the note of a trumpet, and the females a loud chattering like the large Cherry Birds.

The Kentucky Warbler’s song is entirely unlike that of any other Warbler, and is a loud, clearly whistled performance of five, six, or seven notes, turdle, turdle, turdle, resembling in tone some of the calls of the Carolina Wren. He is so persistent in his singing, however, that the Red-Breasted Merganser’s simple croak would sometimes be preferable to it.

But the Skylark—

“All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams and heaven is over-flowed.”

—C. C. Marble.