42 Birds of Orcg07i and Washhigton 



wonderfully incessant singer ! No bird any- 

 where has a fuller or richer note ; none such 

 variety of songs, except, perhaps, the Mocking- 

 bird ; none like this bird makes varied and joy- 

 ous melody in summer and in winter, too ; in 

 rain, in snow, in cold. Not a day in the winter 

 of 1900 and 1 90 1, have Meadowlarks upon a 

 hill near Portland failed to voice the happiness, 

 or bid depart the gloom, of their human neigh- 

 bors. No one knows the bird until he has lis- 

 tened to the many different songs that he sings 

 while i^erched upon tree or fence, or again upon 

 a telegraph pole, or even upon the ridgepole of a 

 house ; nor yet unless he has caught a peculiar 

 and most rapturous song while the bird is on the 

 wing — a song so unlike those we are accustomed 

 to that it seems not to have been uttered by a 

 Meadowlark at all. 



The variety of the songs of the Meadowlark 

 upon this coast, counting songs in different 

 localities, seems limitless. The birds in one 

 locality may not exceed twenty ^•arieties of song, 

 but a few miles in any direction will add, prob- 

 ably, twenty more, etc. I have heard at Forest 

 Grove, in Oregon, five new songs from the same 



