16 BIRD FRIENDS 



interwoven with the songs and add greatly to our 

 enjoyment of them. 



Methods of recording bird music. Several plans 

 have been used for describing and recording bird 

 songs. People differ so much in their way of inter- 

 preting bird songs that no one method of description 

 will be clear to all. 



One of the simplest methods of recording bird 

 songs is to use syllables sounding like the song of the 

 bird. In some cases this works very well, as in the 

 case of the chickadee and some other birds which 

 have been named from their song. In other cases 

 the attempts to describe the song by syllables are not 

 so successful, as different syllables may be used by 

 different people. Following are some examples of 

 attempts that have been made to describe songs this 

 way: — 



Red-winged blackbird : kong-quer-ree, or o-ka-lee, or gug- 

 lug-eee. These all agree in having three syllables and in 

 having the last syllable end in e. 



Maryland yellow -throat : wichity, wichiiy. 



Flicker: wick, tvick, wick. 



Nuthatch: quank, quank, quank. 



Oven-bird: teacher, teacher, teacher. 



Another way of recording songs is to use a series 

 of dots or dashes to indicate the number of syl- 

 lables and the difference in pitch. The song of the 

 chestnut-sided warbler might be represented thus: 

 . This means that the song has 



