The Grosbeaks 



By Joseph Grinnell 



Have you ever heard of the sing-away bird, 



That sings where the run-away river 

 Runs down with its rills from the bald-headed hills 



That stand in the sunshine and shiver? 

 Oh, sing, sing away, sing away ! 

 How the pines and the birches are stirred 

 By the trill of the sing-away bird! 



And beneath the glad sun, every glad-hearted one 



Sets the world to the tune of its gladness; 

 The swift rivers sing it, the wild breezes wing it. 

 Till earth loses thought of her sadness. 



Oh, sing, sing away, sing away ! 

 Oh, sing, happy soul, to joy's giver- — ■ 

 Sing on, by Time's run-away river ! 



— Lucv Larcoiii. 



You would recognize it anywhere by its beak. And you may call this feature 

 of the face a beak, or a nose, or a hand, or a pair of lips. In either case it is 

 thick, heavy, prominent, the common characteristic of the grosbeaks. Individuals 

 may differ in plumage, but always there is the thick, conical bill. 



"Oh, oh, what a big nose you've got!" and "Oh, oh, what a red nose it is!" 

 we exclaimed, when we first met the cardinal face to face in a thicket. In a 

 moment we had forgotten the shape and tint of the beak in the song that poured 

 out of it. It was like forgetting the look of the big rocks between which gushes 

 the waterfall in a mountain gorge. 



Not that the mouth of the grosbeak was built to accommodate its song, 

 but, that being formed for other purposes, it nevertheless is a splendid flute. 



Whichever he may be, the cardinal or the black headed, or the blue or the 

 rose breasted, the grosbeak is a splendid singer. 



On account of its gorgeous coloring, the cardinal is oftenest caged. But 

 to those who love the wild birds best in their native freedom, the cardinal gros- 

 beak imprisoned lacks the charm of manner which marks it in the tangle of 

 wild grapevines and blackberry thickets. Seldom still in the wild, unless it be 

 singing, the red beauty flits and dodges between twigs, and dips into brush and 

 careens through the thickest undergrowth of things that combine to hide it, 

 now here, now there, and everywhere. One would think its bright coat a certain 

 and quick token of its whereabouts, but so active is the lively fellow that it 

 eludes even the sharpest eye, a stranger mistaking its gleam for a rift of sun- 

 light through the treetops. 



Legend tells us that the beak of this bird was once ashen gray and the 



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