WHAT BIRDS SAY AND SING 227 



point in the spring and nested near the old site. 

 He is there the winter of 19,19 singing eaeh Feb- 

 ruary morning as I work on this book, but he is not 

 the master musician we had the four years pre- 

 vious. There is a world of difference between his 

 halting, imperfectly pitched rendition of the song 

 sparrow's notes and that of his loved predecessor, 

 who was a grand opera singer, his tune gay and 

 colourful. He always started on three short notes, 

 sometimes preceded by a grace note quite an octave 

 lower. He reached the last A on a piano key- 

 board. From that, he rose to a D above, fell back 

 to A, dropped lower to F, rose to B, and finished 

 with the A on which he began. As nearly as his 

 song can be reduced to words, it runs: "Fitz, fitz, 

 fitz, we, we — sir, sir-wee, sir-witz, witz." This 

 syllabication may help amateurs in bird song to 

 recognize the song sparrow notes when they hear 

 them, but the words look so awkward in print and 

 fall so far short of conveying my ideas of the mel- 

 ody of this performance that I hesitate to set them 

 down. No bird of the sparrow or finch tribes can 

 come anywhere near the song sparrow in improvisa- 

 tion. He can deliver half a dozen different varia- 

 tions, all based on the same strain. Every song 

 sparrow I have heard almost invariably begins a 

 concert with: "Fitz, fitz" on A. Several experts 

 on bird song consider him "nature's cleverest 

 song genius." In summer his music is not so 

 noticeable in the Babel of warblers, finches, 



