Song Birds and Water Fowl 
he will call it ninety and nine, and later still, 
seventy times seven, for throughout the year no 
two song-sparrows sound just alike. So char- 
acteristic and instantly recognizable as this 
bird’s vocalization is, it is remarkable how free 
it is from stereotyped form. Few other songs 
sound quite so impulsive and unpremeditated. 
Its message is like the anecdote of a versatile sto- 
ry-teller, who puts on new fringes every time he 
tells it, so that the listener never knows just what 
to expect. Yet with all the diversity of form, 
the clear sunshine of its tone and its irrepress- 
ible enthusiasm are the essential qualities that are 
never lacking, from March until November. 
One of the peculiar pledges of the coming 
season is in the delicate tints of dawn upon a 
cloudless morning, that not only burnish the 
skies and glow throughout the air, but stream 
through all the earth—clinging to the trees, and 
getting entangled in the thickets, adorning the 
willows with bright yellow, purpling the briers, 
suffusing the red osier with an intense crimson, 
embrowning the branches of the white birch, and 
giving a bronzed metallic glint to other birches. 
Whoever reconnoitres in early March must 
chiefly be content with possibilities; in April 
he can hunt for certainties. But the last ten 
260 
