INDIGO BUNTING. 
along the roadside, for the little fellow is one of the 
commonest birds of the highway. But he has no gift of 
melody, and of sentiment he knows nothing. His is a 
canarylike voice, pitched almost beyond the keyboard 
limit of the piano, and composed of a series of loud, 
ringing metallic chirp-notes of very nearly equal value, 
which slightly diminish in volume as the song nears the 
end. Expressed by agroup of dashes (these, rather than 
dots, would seem to be nearer a good representation 
of far-reaching chirps), the song should appear thus: 
Se PN Nites ote 
He always introduces his song with a pianissimo 
downward chirp, then proceeds loudly with two or 
three upward chirps, continues with a series which 
alternates up and down, and finishes with three (some- 
times two or four) monotone notes which are remark- 
ably suggestive of the words fish, fish, fish! He is 
an indefatigable songster, and during the nuptial period 
it is common for him to sing at the rate of five songs a 
minute for an hour at a time. His interims, too, are 
short, and it would be a conservative estimate at this 
rate to say the song is repeated (without any variation, 
or with trifling variation) not less than two thousand 
times in a day! Of course, the form of the song—that 
is, the rising and falling inflections of the voice which are 
properly called chirps, their repetitions, the diminuendo, 
and the few monotones together with the comparatively 
equal value of all the notes—is always the same; but the 
particular song which is illustrated by the dashes above, 
and againyrepresented by this record— 
is only one of a great number belonging to the Indigo 
Bunting’s repertoire, for no two birds sing exactly alike. 
There is a striking similarity, though, in the songs of 
particular families, I have become familiar with the 
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