BIRDS. 



IuL,usTRflTED BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY. 



Vol. I. 



JUNE, 1897. 



No. 6. 



BIRD SONG. 



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"I cannot love the man who doth not love, 

 As men love light, the song of happy birds. 



T is indeed fitting that the 

 great poets have ever been the 

 best interpreters of the songs of 

 OLM- birds. In many of the plays of 

 Shakespeare, especially where the 

 scene is laid in the primeval forest, his 

 most delicious bits of fancy are 

 inspired by the flitting throng. 

 Wordsworth and Tennyson, and many 

 of the minor English poets, are pervaded 

 with bird notes, and Shelley's master- 

 piece, The Skylark, will long survive 

 his greater and more ambitious poems. 

 Our own poet, Cranch, has left one 

 immortal stanza, and Bryant, and 

 Longfellow, and Lowell, and Whittier, 

 and Emerson have written enough 

 of poetic melody, the direct inspiration 

 of the feathered inhabitants of the 

 woods, to fill a good-sized volume. In 

 prose, no one has said finer things than 

 Thoreau, who probed nature with a 

 deeper ken than any of his contem- 

 poraries. He is to be read, and read, 

 and read. 



But just what meaning should be 

 attached to a bird's notes — some of 

 which are "the least disagreeable of 

 noises" — will probably never be dis- 

 covered. They do seem to express 

 almost every feeling of which the 

 human heart is capable. We wonder 

 if the Mocking Bird understands what 

 all these notes mean. He is so fine an 



imitator that it is hard to believe he is 

 not doing more than mimicking the 

 notes of other birds, but rather that 

 he really does moc^k them with a sort 

 of defiant sarcasm. He banters them 

 less, perhaps, than the Cat Bird, but 

 one would naturally expect all other 

 birds to fly at him with vengeful 

 purpose. But perhaps the birds are 

 not so sensitive as their human 

 brothers, who do not always look upon 

 imitation as the highest flattery. 



A gentleman who kept a note-book, 

 describes one of the matinee perform- 

 ances of the Mocker, which he attended 

 by creeping under a tent curtain. He 

 sat at the foot of a tree on the top of 

 which the bird was perched uncon- 

 scious of his presence. The Mocker 

 gave one of the notes of the Guinea- 

 hen, a fine imitation of the Cardinal, 

 or Red Bird, an exact reproduction of 

 the note of the Phoebe, and some of the 

 difficult notes of the Yellow-breasted 

 Chat. "Now I hear a young chicken 

 peeping. Now the Carolina Wren sings, 

 'cheerily, cheerily, cheerily' Now a 

 small bird is shrilling with a fine insect 

 tone. A Flicker, a Wood-pewee, and a 

 Phoebe follow in quick succession. 

 Then a Tufted Titmouse squeals. 

 To display his versatility, he gives a 

 dull performance which couples the 

 'go-back ' of the Guinea fowl with the 



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