the; oven-bird's song. 151 



• 



" Outside, the dogs and men are there ; 



A dash for life we'll have to make. 



Oh ! come right quickly — don't get caught, 



Yes, run for life and for my sake." 



Then out they sped and tricked the dogs 



By running in a hollow tree. 



While dogs all had to stay outside — 



And very discontented be. 



Martha Shepard Lippincott. in Boston Convict . 



The Oven-bird's Song. 



The songs of all birds gain in beauty when they are uttered on 

 the wing. They seem to be delivered with more abandon and 

 greater volume. The water thrush's first cousin, the oven-bird, 

 furnishes a striking example of this. His ordinary song consists 

 of a repetition of the same note, hammered out with a constant 

 crescendo. 



Very effective it is, too, as a part of the general music of the for- 

 est, though lacking individual attractivness on account of the mo- 

 notony of its iteration. Biit when the bird rises above the treetops 

 and descends after the fashion of the indigo bird to an accompani- 

 ment of scattered notes he takes far higher rank as a performer. 



Not always, however, does he require the exhilaration and inspi- 

 ration of an aerial toboggan to cause him to abandon his plain 

 chant for a more florid song. I have heard him sing the latter, 

 perched on a grapevine not two feet above the ground. And as if 

 to show that he did not reserve his superior powers for special oc- 

 casions, he mingled it with his plain chant and ending with the 

 song and sometimes reversing this order. 



I love to see the oven-bird on the ground. There is such a ludi- 

 crous assumption of dignity on his part as he strides about the 

 stage, never for a moment forgetting himself so far as to hop. 

 There is the same even, measured steadiness about his movements 

 that there is in his chant. It is only when he launches himself 

 into the effervescing song that he forgets his staid demeanor. — Lip- 

 pincotVs. 



After years of study devoted to the topic, Professor Alfred New- 

 ton of Cambridge stated that without doubt bird migration is the 

 greatest mystery in the entire animal kingdom, "a mystery," he 

 said, "that can be no more explained by the modern man of sci- 

 ence than by the simple-minded savage of antiquity." 



