BOBOLINK. 
Female marked and streaked like a sparrow; brown 
streaked with buff above; head dark sepia with a central 
line of green-buff; lower parts pale yellowish buff graded 
to buff-white. Nest in the tall grass on the ground, 
woven of dried grasses. The birds are very cautious in 
approaching and leaving the nest, always walking to 
and from it a little distance, after alighting or before 
taking wing. Egg gray-white of a bluish cast, speckled 
with dark brown. The bird is unevenly distributed 
throughout the eastern United States, and extends west 
to Utah and Montana. It migrates through Florida and 
across the West Indies to South America, usually via 
Cuba and Yucatan. 
The Bobolink is indeed a great singer, but the latter 
part of his song is a species of musical fireworks. He 
begins bravely enough with a number of well-sustained 
tones, but presently he accelerates his time, loses track 
of his motive, and goes to pieces in a burst of musical 
scintillations. It is a mad, reckless song-fantasia, an 
outbreak of pent-up, irrepressible glee. The difficulty 
in either describing or putting upon paper such music is 
insurmountable. One can follow the singer through 
the first few whistled bars, and then, figuratively 
speaking, he lets down the bars and stampedes. I have 
never been able to ‘‘sort out” the tones as they passed 
at this break-neck speed. Others who desired to record 
the song have found the thing impracticable. Mr. 
Cheney writes: ‘‘We must wait for some interpreter 
with the sound-catching skill of a Blind Tom and the 
phonograph combined, before we may hope to fasten 
the kinks and twists of this live music-box.” 
There is, however, not a small part of the Bobolink’s 
music which is comprehensible. The first part of the 
song usually carries with it a suggestion of the waltz, in 
tolerably clear whistles set to three-four or nine-eight 
time. The following annotation, a good illustration of 
this ryhthm, I obtained at a spot called ‘‘ Paradise,” near 
Smith College, Northampton, Mass.*: 
* All of this Bobolink music is, of necessity, written two octaves 
lower than the bird sings 
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