182 MINOR SONGSTERS. 
He has discovered tlt men, bad as they are, 
are less to be dreaded than hawks and weasels, 
and so, after making sure that his wife is not 
subject to sea-sickness, he swings his nest boldly 
from a swaying shade-tree branch, in full view 
of whoever may choose to look at it. Some 
morning in May — not far from the 10th — you 
will wake to hear him fifing in the elm before 
your window. He has come in the night, and 
is already making himself at home. Once I saw 
a pair who on the very first morning had begun 
to get together materials for anest. His whistle 
is one of the clearest and loudest, but he makes 
little pretensions to music. I have been pleased 
and interested, however, to see how tuneful he 
becomes in August, after most other birds have 
ceased to sing, and after a long interval of silence 
on his own part. Early and late he pipes and 
chatters, as if he imagined that the spring were 
really coming back again forthwith. What the 
explanation of this lyrical revival may be I have 
never been able to gather; but the fact itself is 
very noticeable, so that it would not be amiss to 
call the * golden robin ” the bird of August. 
The oriole’s dusky relatives have the organs 
of song well developed; and although most of 
the species have altogether lost the art of music, 
there are none of them, even now, that do not 
betray more or less of the musical impulse. The 
