168 WOOD NOTES WILD. 



Whippoorwill. — Contin. 



good opportunities with him." — C, S. P., in a letter dated 

 September, 1886. 



"Rhythmical chain." See Index, Rhythm. 



riagg says that the similarity between the notes of this 

 bird and those of the quail is so great that they might 

 be taken as identical. As here given, both the rhythm 

 and the intervals are very different. {In his A Year with 

 the Birds, pp. 197-198.) 



Oriole. — Variations in bird-song. (See p. 71.) 



One of the foremost among our naturalists, Mr. J. A. 

 Allen, had the good fortune to hear an unusual oriole song. 

 Speaking of the variation in the vocal powers of birds of 

 the same species, he says : — 



" But the strangest example of this sort I have noticed, I think, was 

 the case of an Oriole (Icterus Baltimore) that I heard at Ipswich last 

 season. So different were its notes from the common notes of the Balti- 

 more that I failed entirely to refer them to that bird till I saw the author. 

 So much, however, did it resemble a part of the song of the Western 

 Meadow Lark (Sturnella magna ; S. neglecta, Aud.) that it at once not only 

 recalled that bird, but the wild, grassy, gently undulating primitive prairie 

 landscape where I had heard it, and with which the loud, clear, rich, mellow 

 tones of this beautiful songster so admirably harmonize. This bird I re- 

 peatedly recognized from the peculiarity of its notes during my several days' 

 stay at this locality. Aside from such unusual variations as this, which we 

 may consider as accidental, birds of unquestionably the same species, as the 

 Crow, the Blue Jay, the Towhee, and others, at remote localities, as New 

 England, Florida, Iowa, etc., often possess either general differences in 

 their notes and song, easily recognizable, or certain notes at one of these 

 localities never heard at the others, or an absence of some that are else- 

 where familiar. This is perhaps not a strange fact, since it is now so well 

 known that birds of the same species present certain well marked variar 

 tions in size according to the latitude and elevation above the sea of the 

 locality at which they were born, and that they vary considerably, though 

 doubtless within a certain range, in many structural points at one and the 



