COTURNICULUS PASSERIXUS. 131 



hills, are all subtilely expressed in this song ; this is what they are at 

 least capable of." 



Speaking of music, and while I have a favorite author in hand, let 

 me reproduce another j)assage — not alone for its truth and beauty, but 

 because it tells something few know — something about the voice of the 

 Golden-crowned Thrush that I never knew myself till I found it here, 

 familiar as I thought I was with that pretty and dainty bird : "Coming 

 to a dryer and less mossy place in the woods, I am amused with the 

 Golden-crowned Thrush, which, however, is no Thrush at all, but a 

 Warbler, the Seiurus aurocapilhcs. He walks on the ground ahead of 

 me with such an easy, gliding motion, and with such an unconscious, 

 preoccupied air, jerking his head like a Hen or Partridge, now harry- 

 ing, now slackening his pace, that I pause to observe him. If I iit 

 down, he pauses to observe me, and extends his pretty rambling on all 

 sides, apparently very much engrossed with his own affairs, but never 

 losing sight of me. Satisfied that I have no hostile intentions, the 

 pretty pedestrian mounts a limb a few feet from the ground, and gives 

 me the benefit of one of his musical performances, a sort of accelerating 

 chant. Commencing in a very low key, which makes him seem at a 

 very uncertain distance, he grows louder and louder, till his body quakes 

 and his chant runs into a shriek, ringing in my ears with peculiar sharp- 

 ness. This lay may be represented thus: 'Teacher, teacher, teacher, 

 TEACHER, TEACHER ! '—the accent on the first syllable, and each 

 word uttered with increased force and shrillness. No writer with whom 

 I am acquainted gives him credit for more musical ability than is dis- 

 played in this strain ; yet in this the half is not told. He has a far 

 rarer song, Avhich he reserves for some nymph whom he meets in the 

 air. Mounting by easy flights to the top of the tallest tree, he launches 

 into the air with a sort of suspended, hovering flight, like certain of 

 the Finches, and bursts into a perfect ecstacy of song — clear, ringing, 

 copious, rivaling the Goldfinch's in vivacity, and the Linnet's in melody. 

 This strain is one of the rarest bits of bird-melody to be heard. Over 

 the woods, hid from view, the ecstatic singer warbles his finest strain. 

 In the song you instantly detect his relationship to the Water- Wagtail 

 {Seiurus noveboracensis) — erroneously called Water-Thrush — whose song 

 is likewise a sudden burst, full and ringing, and with a tone of youth- 

 ful joyousness in it, as if the bird had just had some unexpected good 

 fortune. For nearly two years this strain of the pretty walker was little 

 more than a disembodied voice to me, and 1 was puzzled by it as 

 Thoreau was by his mysterious Night- Warbler, which, by the way, I 

 suspect was no new bird at all, but one he was otherwise familiar with. 

 The little bird himself seems disposed to keep the matter a secret, and 

 improves every opportunity to repeat before you his shrill, accelerating 

 lay, as if this were quite enough, and all he laid claim to. Still, 1 trust 

 I am betraying no confidence in making the matter i)ublic here. 1 think 

 this is pre-eminently his love-song, as I hear it oftenest about the mat- 

 ing season. I have caught half suppressed bursts of it from two males 

 chasing each other with fearful speed through the forest." 



COTURNICULUS PASSERINUS, (Wils.) Bp. 



Yellow -winged Sparrow. 



Frhu/iUa paHsrriua, WiLS., Am. Orii. iii, IHll, 7(), iil.'2(i, f. .'..— Dr.. Syn. 1828, lO'J.— AuP., 



Orn. IJi.)},'. ii, ItiM, 180, v, 4U7, pi. i:U). 

 FriiitiiUa (Spiza) jxixncriiia, Bi'., Obs. Wils. 1825, No. 111. 

 Einbcrlza jnimriiia, AuD., Syn. iHHlt, UK?.— Arn., 1?. Am. iii, 18-12, 7^^, pi. Ifi2.— Gin., B. 



L. I. 1844, 103.— I'UTN., Pr. Ess. lust. 185(), 210 (summer ; couimou). 



