WHAT BIRDS SAY AND SING 241 



which he usually adds: "Spink, spank, spink!" 

 We have few, if any, birds that sing a longer song 

 from the vantage of any fence post or wood stump 

 around our meadow. This veritable music-box 

 pours out his song, the whole of which is an in- 

 terrupted run, interspersed with his call note and 

 ravishing variations which run high and drop again 

 in a sort of fantasy of irrepressible, spontaneous 

 clearness. Many writers on bird song have been 

 able to follow him through the first two repetitions 

 of his name and a choice assortment of "spink, 

 wink, tink, link," only to be forced to give up 

 when the outpouring reaches flood tide. The 

 description of a bobolink in song which called him 

 an "irrepressible music-box" is the best that I 

 have seen. 



There are birds which at times fail us, but I can 

 remember no season during which we have not had 

 goldfinches nesting in the bushes around the edges 

 of the woods, in the woods pasture, and beside the 

 field fences of the Cabin, north. These birds come 

 late, nest but once in a season, and after nesting 

 spend the greater part of their time in country 

 gardens. They pass back and forth from these to 

 the woods, singing on wing, so that they sow the 

 air with warbled notes, impossible to syllabify 

 because they are of such bubbling spontaneity. 

 Our gardens seem to be full of lettuce, vegetable 

 oyster, radish, and flower seeds on which these 

 birds feed, and they flock over and claim possession 



