WHAT BIRDS SAY AND SING 249 



olive, not yellow, but the daintiest shades that 

 eould be formed from delicate mingling of all 

 of them. His crest was shaped much like the 

 cardinal's but carried mostly in a line horizontal 

 with the beak. There were bars of yellow on 

 his tail and red touches like wax on his second- 

 aries, from which he takes the name of waxwing. 

 His cry is a queer, whistled complaint like a gust of 

 steam escaping from a small pipe, and higher than 

 the last note on a piano. If he has a song, I never 

 have heard it. 



A bird with which I am extremely familiar 

 through much experience around his nest, is the 

 red-eyed vireo. His call note: "Preach-er, preach- 

 er!" is constantly used as a nickname for him. 

 His song is so divided and intoned that it lends 

 colour to this translation of his tribal call. 

 Wilson Flagg's inimitable interpretation of his 

 song is the best that I have seen. He imagines the 

 little orator standing in his pulpit of leafy green, 

 addressing a feathered audience, at whom he 

 shouts: "You see it! You know it! Do you 

 hear me? Do you believe it?" My enjoyment 

 of this translation of the red-eye's song does not 

 prevent my giving the ideas of another expert in 

 bird music, who sees nothing clerical about the bird 

 and thinks he says : "Tom Kelly, whip Tom Kelly ! " 

 How he ever heard or imagined that the bird made 

 a note that could be so translated, is a mystery to 

 me. More pleasing is the version of the third 



