American Sonce Birds. 417 



'to 



and the buoyant gaiety of his action is no less fascinating than 

 his song. He sweeps round with enthusiastic ecstasy, he 

 mounts and descends as his song swells or dies away ; he 

 bounds aloft, as Bartram says, with the celerity of an arrow, 

 as if to recover or recal his very soul, expired in the last ele- 

 vated strain. A bystander might suppose that the whole 

 feathered tribes had assembled together on a trial of skill ; 

 each striving to produce his utmost effect, so perfect are his 

 imitations. He often deceives the sportsman, and even birds 

 themselves are sometimes imposed upon by this admirable 

 mimic. In confinement he loses Utile of the power or energy 

 of his song. Fie whistles for the dog; Caesar starts up, ^yags 

 his tail, and runs to meet his master. He cries like a hurt 

 chicken, and the hen hurries about, with feathers on end, to 

 protect her injured brood. He repeats the tune taught him, 

 though it be of considerable length, with great accuracy. He 

 runs over the notes of the canary, and of the red bird, with 

 such superior execution and effect, that the mortified songsters 

 confess his triumph by their silence. His fondness for variety, 

 some suppose to injure his song. His imitations of the brown 

 thrush are often interrupted by the crowing of cocks ; and his 

 exquisite warblings after the blue bird, are mingled with the 

 screaming of swallows, or the cackling of hens. During moon- 

 light, both in the wild and tame state, he sings the whole night 

 long. The hunters, in their night excursions, know that the 

 moon is rising the instant they begin to hear his delightful 

 solo. After Shakspeare, Barrington attributes in part the 

 exquisiteness of the nightingale's song to the silence of the 

 night ; but if so, what are we to think of the bird which, in 

 the open glare of day, overpowers and often silences all com- 

 petition ? His natural notes partake of a character similar to 

 those of the brown thrush, but they are more sweet, more ex- 

 pressive, more varied, and uttered with greater rapidity. Mr. 

 Jennings is so eager to make his readers believe that " during 

 the day its chief notes consist of the imitations of the songs of 

 its neighbours, while at night its song is more peculiarly its 

 own," that he has repeated it in three several places of his 

 Ornitholbgia. I must say that to me this has more the air of 

 conjecture than of fact. 



The Yellow-breasted Chat (Pipra polyglotta) naturally fol- 

 lows his superior in the art of mimicry. When his haunt is 

 approached, he scolds the passenger in a great variety of odd 

 and uncouth monosyllables, difficult to describe, but easily 

 imitated so as to deceive the bird himself, and draw him after 

 you to a good distance ; in such cases his responses are con- 

 stant and rapid, strongly expressive of anxiety and anger, and 



