FAMILY Turdide. 
that of a turquoise blue bird! The gloom of the cypress 
swamp is a foil for the flash of the Prothonotary who is 
ever on the move; no Oriole or Tanager outshines him. 
But his song does not equal his costume, Mr. Brewster 
likens it to the notes of the Solitary Sandpiper with two 
more syllables added. (See illustration, p. 234.) 
It may also be quite as difficult to think that a bird 
should have actually sung one of the melodies recorded 
in this volume; if so, the best way to overcome the 
difficulty is to take ears as well as eyes into the fields and 
listen not to every singer at once but to one at a time! 
Perhaps then, after the unravelling of Nature’s tangled 
gold and silver threads of melody, one strain may be 
heard far more beautiful than any of the musical frag- 
ments recorded here. The little bird is Nature’s expo- 
nent of the joy of living; his song never dies with him, 
he passes it on! But the singer! where, what—so little 
indication is there of such a thing—is his end? Perhaps 
Rev. William J. Long has answered that question better 
than any one, in the School of the Woods. He writesas 
follows of the touching sight of a little aged wood 
Warbler which he found loitering beside the spring near 
his tent in the wilderness: ‘‘ For several days I had 
noticed him there resting or flitting about the under- 
brush. . . . Hewasold and alone; the dark feathers 
of his head were streaked with gray, and his feet showed 
the wrinkled scales that age always brings to the 
birds. . . . Today he was quieter than usual; when 
I stretched out my hand to take him he made no resist- 
ance, but settled down quietly on my finger and closed 
his eyes. . . . As twilight came and all. the voices 
of the wood were hushed, I put him back on the ever- 
green frond, where he nodded off tosleep. . . . Next 
morning he was closer to the friendly spring. 
Again he nestled down in my hand and drank oratetuliy 
the drop of water from my finger tip. At twilight I 
found him hanging head down from a spruce root, his 
feet clinched in a hold that would never loosen, his bill 
just touching the life-giving water. . . . He had 
fallen asleep there, in peace.” 
316 
