NATURAL HISTORY SKETCHES 339 



One of the most important things to learn is the note 

 or song of the bird. It would be hard to imagine what 

 a spring would be without the songs of birds; spring 

 would lose one of her greatest charms if there were no 

 song birds. The best part of a bird is its song. The 

 cedar bird is beautiful, but has no song and is no favor- 

 ite. One of the first June birds we hear in the woods is 

 the red-eyed fly-catcher and you hear his note all day, 

 rain or shine. Another quite common is called golden 

 crown thrush, but which, I think, should be called a 

 warbler. It has a sharp note that sounds like "teacher, 

 teacher, teacher," and at times a far rarer song, like 

 some of the finches. In the song of the robin there is 

 something military ; in that of the bobolink, hilarity; in 

 that of the cat bird, pride. 



But I enter the woods and, while listening to the lesser 

 songsters, a strain has reached my ear from out of the 

 depths of the forest that to me is the finest sound in 

 nature — the divine soprano of the hermit thrush. The 

 river drivers call it the nightingale, as it sings in the 

 night. You often hear it a long way off, sometimes a 

 quarter of a mile away, where only the stronger and 

 more perfect parts of his music reach you and through 

 the general chorus of warblers and finches you detect 

 this sound, rising pure and serene as if a spirit from 

 some remote height was slowly chanting a divine accom- 

 paniment. The song appeals to the sentiment of the 

 beautiful and suggests a serene, religious beatitude as 

 no other sound in nature does. 



Although this bird sings at nearly all hours of the 

 day, it best appears in the evening song. The note is 

 very simple and sounds like this: "O spheral, .spheral. 



