A BIRD-LOVER’S APRIL. 231 
ridge-pole of a barn. He rose for perhaps thirty 
feet, not spirally, but in a zigzag course, — like 
a horse climbing a hill with a heavy load, — 
all the time calling, chip, chip, chip. Then he 
went round and round in a small circle, with a 
kind of hovering action of the wings, vocifer- 
ating hurriedly, Phebe, Phebe, Phebe ; after 
which he shot down into the top of a tree, and 
with a lively flirt of his tail took up again the 
same eloquent theme. During the next few 
weeks I several times found birds of this spe- 
cies similarly engaged. And it is worthy of re- 
mark that, of the four flycatchers which regu- 
larly pass the summer with us, three may be 
said to be in the habit of singing in the air, 
while the fourth (the wood pewee) does the 
same thing, only with less frequency. It is cu- 
rious, also, on the other hand, that not one of 
our eight common New England thrushes, as 
far as I have ever seen or heard, shows the least 
tendency toward any such state of lyrical exal- 
tation. Yet the thrushes are song birds par ez- 
cellence, while the phebe, the least flycatcher, 
and the kingbird are not supposed to be able 
to sing at all. The latter have the soul of mu- 
sic in them, at any rate; and why should it not 
be true of birds, as it is of human poets and 
would-be poets, that sensibility and faculty are 
not always found together? Perhaps those 
