VEERY. 
call-note, very loud and strongly burred, to which he 
sommonly resorts when annoyed or alarmed. 
In Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway’s North American Birds 
(vol. i., pg. 10) is this account of the song: ‘‘ There isa 
solemn harmony and a beautiful expression which com- 
bine to make the song of this Thrush surpass that of all 
the other American Wood Thrushes”; it consists of 
‘‘an inexpressibly delicate metallic utterance of the syl- 
lables ta-weel'ah, ta-weel'ah, ta-wil'ah, twil'ah, accom, 
panied by a fine trill which renders it truly seductive. 
The last two notes are uttered in a soft and subdued un- 
dertone, thereby producing, in effect, an echo of the 
others.” This description coincides perfectly with my 
first notation which represents with tolerable accuracy 
that duplication of the tones which the author calls an 
echo. Nelson considers the Veery’s song the most spir- 
itual one of all the wild-wood singers, and perhaps he is 
right, for the bird sings a vesper hymn to the dying day, 
and unless he stirred the deepest feelings of the heart at 
such a solemn hour, we could never have had these 
beautiful lines from the pen of Dr. van Dyke: 
‘The moonbeams over Arno’s vale in silver flood were 
pouring, 
When first I heard the nightingale a long-lost love 
deploring. 
So passionate, so full of pain, it sounded strange and 
eerie; 
I longed to hear a simpler strain—the wood-notes of 
the Veery. 
e « . e ° . 2 
247 
