and perhaps half a dozen individuals engage in nocturnal conversation. One, 

 more "nervous" from yesterday's overwork perhaps, actually has a nightmare 

 and cackles in fright. All this has no connection with the usual time for the 

 head of the family to give his warning crow that midnight or daytime is close 

 at hand and there is scarcely time for another wink of sleep. 



Once in the secret of bird notes, even a blind person may locate the imme- 

 diate vicinity of a nest. And he may identify species by the call-notes and songs. 

 We have a blind girl neighbor who declares she would rather have her hearing 

 than her sight, she has learned so well to hear what her sight might deprive her of. 



When once the ear has learned its better lessons, glimpses, so to speak, of 

 bird life flutter to it as naturally as leaves flutter to the sward in autumn. It is 

 the continual chatter, chatter, that deprives many of us of the best enjoyments of 

 life. We talk when we should listen. Nature speaks low more often than she 

 shouts. A taciturn child or person finds out things that are worth the habit of 

 keeping still to know. 



These remarks are in the interest of singing birds, A bird is sometimes 

 interrupted and comes to a sudden stop. A footstep, a word, a laugh, and the 

 very next note is swallowed by the singer. By studying our songsters one may 

 come to know for one's self how individuals differ even among the same species. 



There is the sad-voiced phoebe ! Even she forgets her customary dismal cry 

 at certain times when flies are winging their midday dance on invisible floors 

 that never were waxed. It is when she takes a "flat stand" on the roof-corner 

 and "bewails her lot" that her notes are utterly disconsolate. Take a couple of 

 phoebes on a cloudy day, just after "one's folks have gone away from home on a 

 long visit," and nothing lends an aid to sorrow like their melancholy notes. Really 

 we do believe phrebe thinks he is singing. But he has mistaken his calling. 

 Some of the goldfinches have a plaintive note, especially while nesting, which 

 appeals to the gloomy side of the listener, if he chance to have such a side. 



Were Coleridge listening to either of these, the phcebe or the goldfinch, he 

 would doubtless say, in answer to the charge of sadness : 



"A melancholy bird? Oh, idle thought! 

 In nature there is nothing melancholy." 



And he would have us believe the birds are "merry" when they sing. 



And so they shall be merry. Even the mourning dove shall make us glad. 

 She does not intend to mourn ; the appearance of sadness being only the cadence 

 of her natural voice. She has not learned the art of modulation ; though the 

 bluebird and the robin and all the thrushes call her attention to the matter every 

 year. 



If one will closely watch a singer, unbeknown to him, when he is in the 

 very act, one may note the varying expression of the body from the tip of his 

 beak to the tip of his tail. Sometimes he will stand still with closely fitting 

 plumage and whole attitude on tiptoe. Sometimes he will crouch, and lift the 



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