Yex.LOW-THROATED VIREO. 
tice, he sticks to that locustlike buzz which I have 
described as reedlike. As for what he says, that is again 
a matter of opinion. Mr. Chapman gives the syllables as 
follows, but I place them up and down off the line to in- 
dicate the pitch: 
*“ See here; are 
me; I’m where 
you?” 
At the time of the Boer War I imagined this interesting ° 
bird was telling me all about it in the following way: 
Safeking. Modder river, Buluwayo. Molappo. Boer warf 
Certainly one finds the word Buluwayo fits a particular 
group of four notes remarkably well, though they are 
fused together almost inseparably. 
There is no variation from this kind of singing so far 
as lam aware, except that the little fellow occasionally 
talks to himself sotto voce, as many another bird does, 
when his remarks become musically incoherent. I rec. 
ollect whistling to him one day, in his own fashion, 
when we met in the Botanic Garden, Cambridge, and to 
my infinite surprise he dropped his stereotyped song, 
and ran rippling along among a lot of trills and warbles, 
pianissimo et gracioso! That was a surprise, and I 
wondered whether it was meant for a tender love ditty, 
with myself mistaken for the charming Juliet! Perhaps 
so, who can tell? 
As for the stereotyped song of the Yellow-throat, that, 
like all the other Vireos’ songs, is very uncertain in 
pitch; one is never sure about the key, for one group of 
notes may suggest B flat andanother F. Butif Ishould 
render the melody with an accompaniment as one might 
reasonably suppose the bird would render it if he only 
knew how to stick to a given key and sing with the piano, 
the result would be something like the following coherent 
melodic form: 
159 
