The Birds' Calendar 



Half of the charm of bird-songs is in the 

 fact that in their varying quahties they repro- 

 duce such diverse scenes in nature. There is a 

 noonday brightness in the purple finch's melo- 

 dy, whose radiant notes are like the sunbeams 

 jilaying among the tremulous leaves. In the 

 wood thrush there is indeed no overpowering 

 ecstasy as in the ardent finch, but what a rich, 

 reposeful dignity — a liquid coolness in that 

 rippling cadence-phrase, the song par excel- 

 lence of twilight and deep woods. 



A bird that comes very enthusiastically in- 

 troduced, but with which, I regret to say, I 

 have only a passing acquaintance as yet, is a 

 handsome, gifted, and striking individual, re- 

 nowned in prose and poetry as a most dashing, 

 happy-go-lucky sort of fellow, a feathered ex- 

 travaganza, an intoxicated soloist, an artistic 

 comedian — the bobolink, called in his south- 

 ern winter quarters the " rice-bird," from the 

 character of his diet, and in the Middle States 

 on his migrations the " reed-bird." 



I accidentally discovered only two of them 

 this summer in watching a large flock of red- 

 winged blackbirds, with whom they seemed to 

 have fallen in company, and it was then too 

 late in the season to witness and hear their pe- 

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