THE INVITATION 215 



bird, if the books are to be credited, is melody and 

 harmony. Again, he says the song of the blue 

 grosbeak resembles the bobolink's, which it does 

 about as much as the color of the two birds resem- 

 bles each other; one is black and white and the 

 other is blue. The song of the wood-wagtail, he 

 says, consists of a "short succession of simple notes 

 beginning with emphasis and gradually falling." 

 The truth is they run up the scale instead of down, 

 beginning low and ending in a shriek. 



Yet, considering the extent of Audubon's work, 

 the wonder is the errors are so few. I can at this 

 moment recall but one observation of his, the con- 

 trary of which I have proved to be true. In his 

 account of the bobolink he makes a point of the fact 

 that, in returning south in the fall, they do not 

 travel by night as they do when moving north in 

 the spring. In Washington I have heard their calls 

 as they flew over at night for four successive au- 

 tumns. As he devoted the whole of a long life to 

 the subject, and figured and described over four 

 hundred species, one feels a real triumph on finding 

 in our common woods a bird not described in his 

 work. I have seen but two. Walking in the 

 woods one day in early fall, in the vicinity of West 

 Point, I started up a thrush that was sitting on the 

 ground. It alighted on a branch a few yards off, 

 and looked new to me. I thought I had never 

 before seen so long-legged a thrush. I shot it, and 

 saw that it was a new acquaintance. Its peculiarities 

 were its broad, square tail; the length of its legs, 



