BIRDS AND BATTLEFIELDS. 181 



tune awhile, then another, and did not allow 

 me to leave the place until he had shown me 

 that he could sing at least four tunes. 



Part of his strain is a kind of gurgle, as if 

 he might have just taken a drink of some- 

 thing a little more potent than water. As a 

 rule, he closes each run with an emphatic note 

 cut off short, often with the rising inflection. 

 His little white eyeballs are not for nothing. 

 They are bristling with interrogation and ex- 

 clamation points. There are times when, hid- 

 den in a bush, the white-eye will engage in a 

 wild chattering, tumbling his notes over one 

 another in such odd chaos that you feel sure 

 there must be several birds engaged in a melee. 

 This performance is a genuine bird racket. 



What a haunting song is that of Bachman's 

 sparrow ! He is peculiar to the South. On 

 Chickamauga battleiield, now a national park, 

 one of these birds was singing in an almost 

 magical way, with a touch of sadness in his 

 tones, as if he were rehearsing an elegy for the 

 heroes slain over thirty years ago. No doubt 

 his forbears sano; the same tunes in the same 

 place during the trying times of the " cold and 

 cruel war." On the hillsides sloping down from 

 General Bragg's tower on Missionary Kidge, the 

 Bachman sparrows were lavish of song. They 



