224 The Ottawa Naturalist. [March 



• A NEW SONG FOR A COMMON BIRD. 



By W. E. Saunders, London, Ont. 



On Mav 3rd ot the present year Mr. H. Gould and I spent the 

 day twenty-five miles west of London, seeking- with some success 

 the nests of the larger hawks. Near the close of the day there 

 lay a few miles between us and the railway-station, and we chose 

 the longer of two ways " for a walk," to see the country and to 

 hear the birds. When the light had grown so dim that we could 

 no longer see a bird at any distance, our attention was arrested 

 by a harsh nasal "gaap," delivered in a tone midway between 

 that of a snipe and a night-hawk, to the latter of which we were 

 at first inclined to refer it. Sitting down to listen, we were in a 

 few minutes startled to hear the bird evidently flying our way, and 

 uttering all the time a most peculiar set of twitterings, which we 

 could not accurately describe. When over our heads we caught 

 a glimpse of it, still rising, then turning, and in a few seconds 

 more the twitterings ceased and then the monotonous, reg-ular 

 *' gaap " reached us again, from about the locality of his former 

 perch. While awaiting further developments we speculated on 

 the identity of the singer, and what we considered our best guess 

 was the snipe, for the notes appeared to have some characters 

 which fulfilled our ideas of the kind of song a snipe might sing — 

 }f he could. Continuing our vigil, we were favoured with several 

 repetitions of the flight song, the "gaap" being continuously 

 rendered at intervals of say five seconds during all the time when 

 the bird was on the ground. It was too dark to see to shoot the 

 bird, and much too dark to have found it, it we had shot it, and, 

 besides, we had no gun; so we were compelled to leave it, and for 

 some months were in ignorance of its identity, no one to whom 

 the problem was referred being able to throw the least light on 

 the matter. 



Recently, however, in reviewing the pages of the "Nidologist" 

 I read an interesting article (Page 6, vol. IV.) by Mr. R. B. Mc- 

 Lain, of Elm Grove, W. Va., on the twilight song ot the Meadow- 

 lark which seems to parallel our own exactly, and as this opens up 



