148 WOOD NOTES WILD. 



White-bellied Nuthatch. — Contin. 



legs not larger than a darning-needle and quite as naked, 

 and toes the size of a hair, with an activity and rapidity 

 reminding us of electricity itself ? And this is only his 

 regular exercise while getting his breakfast." 



Field-Sparrow. (See p. 35.) 



" I find more and more that the birds extemporize,^ and 

 that those of the same species do not sing alike. All 

 summer in Lynn the field-sparrows ' went up ' accelerando 

 S crescendo. Here, twenty times a day, I hear them 

 going down, down every time, and diminishing, — just re- 

 versing it. It is a ' queer ' thing, but there is no mistake 

 about it. Again, the indigo-bird sings nothing here that 

 I heard from him in Lynn. 



" But nobody can tell me what ' feller ' sings, — 



He is the ' lost chord.' I knew the song well when a 

 boy ; heard it once at Maple Grove, but could not see the 



bird." — C, S. P. in a letter dated August, 1888. 



" I must not omit to say that occasionally one may hear 

 the field-sparrow reverse the order of the melody here 

 given by descending after the opening monotones." — Note 

 written by the author on his field-sparrow paper after its appearance in 

 the Century Magazine. 



1 See Index, Extemporizing. 



