WHAT BIRDS SAY AND SIXG 243 



a snake or squirrel approaches the nest location. 

 His song, in pure, sweet tones, but of monotonous 

 delivery, is the famous "Old Sam Peabody" so 

 human in utterance that country folk call him the 

 "Peabody bird." His cousin the chipping sparrow 

 has a call note which is a sharper, more tensely 

 inflected " Chip," and a song of scarcely more than a 

 persistently reiterated note which is the least inter- 

 esting music of the sparrow family. The field spar- 

 row uses the same call note, very similar to the 

 others, andhas a song which he varies in a number of 

 ways. These songs are difficult to put into words, 

 while the musician's ending is almost invariably 

 a roll of piping trills, sweet and melodious. In 

 the length of the road from the woods to the high- 

 way, we had seven nests of these birds the season 

 of 1918. 



The chewink is a bird which comes to us at every 

 spring migration, industriously scratching the earth 

 among the leaves and roots and making himself 

 extremely familiar all around the Cabin, north, 

 especially in the thickets near the spring. The 

 birds have a very distinctive dress, the male being 

 conspicuous for a black head and coat touched 

 with white on the sleeves and tail, white shirt, and 

 a russet vest never closed in front, merely showing 

 before the folded wings. The female has lovely 

 shades of the same colour. Her russet is lighter 

 and where the male is black she is a soft, warm, 

 dust colour, a shade as effective as dove colour, but 



