SCRAPING ACQUAINTANCE. 141 



two, or at the most three, of the species singing 

 together, and trust his memory to make the nec- 

 essary comparison. 



The song of the wood thrush is perhaps the 

 most easily set apart from the rest, because of 

 its greater compass of voice and bravery of ex- 

 ecution. The Wilson's song, as you hear it by 

 itself, seems so perfectly characteristic that you 

 fancy you can never mistake any other for it ; 

 and yet, if you are in northern New England 

 only a week afterwards, you may possibly hear 

 a Swainson (especially if he happens to be one 

 of the best singers of his species, and, more es- 

 pecially still, if he happens to be at just the 

 right distance away), who you will say, at first 

 thought, is surely a Wilson. The difficulty of 

 distinguishing the voices is naturally greatest in 

 the spring, when they have not been heard for 

 eight or nine months. Here, as elsewhere, the 

 student must be willing to learn the same lesson 

 over and over, letting patience have her perfect 

 work. That the five songs are really distin- 

 guishable is well illustrated by the fact (which 

 I have before mentioned), that the presence of 

 the Alice thrush in New England during the 

 breeding season was announced as probable by 

 myself, simply on the strength of a song which 

 I had heard in the White Mountains, and which, 

 as I believed, must be his, notwithstanding I 



