124 Sketches of Some Common Birds. 



unknown as a song bird. The same are probably iis 

 habits throughout Illinois and adjacent regions." 



In this region the song sparrow appears early, closely 

 following the bluebird, robin, and meadow lark, and 

 singing from the first morning of its arrival its sweet and 

 varied cadences. Very few of the days of late February 

 or early March, whose genial sunshine heralds the spring, 

 are allowed to pass before it comes chanting from regions 

 farther south where it has been strangely silent and 

 retired. Thus we class the song sparrow among the 

 earliest of our spring songsters. It is certainly one of 

 the most persistent, for daily through the spring and 

 summer it practices its strains at its accustomed stands, 

 when many other species have long been silent or 

 else have departed from our latitude. The gener- 

 ous measure of its melody has done more than the 

 quality of its music to render this sparrow a favorite ; and 

 its hardy facing of March winds and storms to enliven 

 this ordinarily disagreeable month, adds to the estimation 

 in which the song sparrow is commonly held. However, 

 in Illinois this familiar bird appears to be somewhat neg- 

 lected. Its song is loud and cheery, and it comes into our 

 gardens and door-yards to sing and to rear its brood, yet 

 fiew persons it thus favors with its music and presence are 

 well acquainted with the hardy author of the chant which 

 so frequently greets their ears. 



There is a wonderful variation in the songs of two 

 individuals and even in the songs of the same bird. 

 Frequently I have heard two males near each other sing- 

 ing strains so unlike that I was impelled to believe that 

 the songsters were of different species. The ordinary 

 song begins with three or four repetitions of the syllable 

 ^' plee," followed by a cadenza variously accented and 

 executed in more rapid time than the opening notes of 

 the song, usually in a regularly ascending scale. After 

 the conspicuous silence of the birds we long to hear, the 

 voice of the song sparrow to the bird-lover is wonderfully 

 attractive, and possesses a charm not based upon its in- 

 trinsic merit as a musical production. 



The song sparrow is truly a bird of the bushes and the 

 tangle, but whether in town or country makes no differ- 



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