CALANDRIA MOCKING-BIRD 7 
Calandria is really an original singer or merely a 
cunning plagiarist, able to steal scraps of fifty different 
melodies and to blend them in some sort into one 
complete composition. As a whole the song is in 
character utterly unlike that of any other bird (birds 
of the Mimus genus of course excepted), for the same 
notes are never repeated twice in the same order ; 
and though the Calandria has many favourite notes, 
he is able to vary every one of them a hundred ways. 
Sometimes the whole song seems to be made up of 
imitations of other singers, with slight variations— 
and not of singers only, for now there will be clear 
flute-like notes, only to be succeeded by others reedy 
and querulous as the hunger-calls of a young Finch ; 
then there will be pretty flourishes or Thrush-like 
phrases, and afterwards screams, as of a frightened 
Swallow hurrying through the sky to announce the 
approach of a Falcon; or perhaps piteous outcries, 
as of a chicken in the clutches of a Kite. 
Nevertheless Azara says truly that the Calandria 
does not mock or mimic the songs of other birds ; 
for though the style and intonation of a score of 
different singers are reproduced by him, one can never 
catch a song, or even a portion of a song, of which he 
is able to say that it is absolutely like that of any 
other species. This much, however, can be said of 
the Calandria: he has a passion for endless variety 
in singing, a capacity for varying his tones to almost 
any extent, and a facility in reproducing the notes 
of other birds, which, in the Virginian Mocking-bird 
of North, and in the White-banded Mocking-bird 
