256 THE CATBIRD. 
talented singers known. One such I remember, which, overcome by the charms 
of a May day sunset, mounted the tip of a pasture elm, and poured forth a 
hymn of praise in which every voice of woodland and field was laid under con- 
tribution. Yet all were suffused by the singer’s own emotion. Oh, how that 
voice rang out upon the still evening air! The bird sang with true feeling, 
an artist in every sense, and the delicacy and accuracy of his phrasing must 
have silenced a much more captious critic than I. Never at a loss for a note, 
never pausing to ask himself what he should sing next, he went steadily on, 
now with a phrase from Robin’s song, now with the shrill cry of the Red- 
headed Woodpecker, each softened and refined as his own infallible musical 
taste  dictat- 
ed; now and 
again he in- 
terspersed 
these with 
bits of his 
ownnone less 
beautiful. 
The carol of 
the Vireo, the 
tender ditties 
of the Song 
and Vesper 
Sparrows, 
and the more 
pretentious 
efforts of the 
Gros beaks, 
had all im- 
pressed 
AN EARLY NEST. t hem selves 
upon this 
musician’s ear, and he repeated them, not slavishly, but with discernment and 
deep appreciation. As the sun sank lower in the west I left him there, a dull 
gray bird, with form scarcely outlined against the evening sky, but my soul 
had taken flight with his—up into that blest abode where all Nature’s voices 
are blended into one, and all music is praise. 
Taken near Waverly. Photo by Rev. W. F. Henninger. 
