110 BULLETIN 195, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



melody. As for weather, dark days and sun days are the same to him. * * * 

 Indeed no storm can be more violent than those of the waterfalls in the midst 

 of which he delights to dwell. However dark and boisterous the weather, snow- 

 ing, blowing, or cloudy, all the same he sings, and with never a note of sadness. 

 No need of spring sunshine to tliaw his song, for it never freezes. Never shall 

 you hear anything wintery from his warm breast ; no pinched cheeping, no 

 wavering notes between sorrow and joy ; his mellow, fluty voice is ever tuned 

 to downright gladness, as free from dejection as cock-crowing. * * * 



What may be regarded as the separate songs of the Ouzel are exceedingly dif- 

 ficult of description, because they are so variable and at the same time so con- 

 fluent. * * * Nearly all of his music is sweet and tender, lapsing from his 

 round breast like water over the smooth lip of a pool, then breaking farther on 

 into a sparkling foam of melodious notes, which glow with subdued enthusiasm, 

 yet without expressing much of the strong, gushing ecstasy of the bobolink or 

 skylark. 



The more striking strains are perfect arabesques of melody, composed of a 

 few full, round, mellow notes, embroidered with delicate trills which fade and 

 melt in long slender cadences. In a general way his music is that of the 

 sti'eams refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes of the falls are 

 in it, the thrills of rapids, the gurgling of margin eddies, the low whispering of 

 level reaches, and the sweet tinkle of separate drops oozing from the ends of 

 mosses and falling into tranquil pools. 



After the above beautiful words of worshipful praise, it seems 

 almost a sacrilege to say anything more about the voice of the ouzel, 

 but a few call notes, not included in Muir's account, are worth men- 

 tioning. An alarm note, a sharp jigic^ j^9^c^ is mentioned by Ehinger 

 (1930) and by others. Grinnell and Storer (1924) write: "The call 

 note is short and rather burred, uttered singly when the dipper is 

 'jouncing' on a rock, or given in rapid series when the bird takes to 

 flight. One of our renderings of it is sit, sit, sit, * * * • another 

 bseet, or extended to hs-se-se-se-se-se-et. It is quite different in char- 

 acter from the song, and resembles in general character the call note 

 of the caiion wren." Claude T. Barnes writes to me that one he was 

 watching "flew to a wet stone and uttered a single note, cheep, but in 

 a few seconds more it flew upstream uttering a chatter like cheep a la 

 Ja la, the characteristic notes of the species when flying along a brook.'' 

 He also mentions a protesting chatter, "which sounded like ching, 

 ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, uttered more rapidly than I could 

 count the notes and with a thin, tinkle-like sound, as of a large fishing 

 reel clicking. I could hear it distinctly above the roar of the fall. The 

 note was repeated six times in each song or scold, whatever it was." 



Mr. Ratlibun tells me that "under favorable conditions many of the 

 notes of this bird's song carry a long distance. On quiet mornings and 

 when the lake was calm, more than once I heard the song coming 

 from the far side of the lake which was more than a mile away." 



Enemies. — Mr. Steiger (1940) writes: 



Its natural enemies are »uany. The water snake, mink, marten, the skunk, 

 weasel and other stream-frequenting animals continuously prey upon the mother 



