60 IN BIRD LAND. 
ends with a merry little trill having a delightfully 
human intonation. ‘There is, indeed,. something 
innocent and even childlike about the voices of 
these sparrows. Had they the song-sparrow’s skill 
in execution, they would rival that triller’s vocal 
performances. How many of them are taking 
part in the concert! ‘They seem to be holding a 
song carnival to-day, and there is real witchery in 
their music. Frequently their songs are superim- 
posed, as it were, upon the semi-musical chattering 
in which these birds so often indulge.” 
But, strange to say, although the conditions were 
apparently in every respect favorable, I did not hear 
the song of a single tree-sparrow after that epochal 
day for more than a year. Evidently these birds 
are erratic songsters, at least in this latitude. On 
the same day the meadow-larks flung their flute-like 
songs athwart the fields, and the bold bugle of the 
Carolina wren echoed through the woods. 
February 14. ‘In the swamp the song-sparrows 
are holding an opera festival,’ my notes run. ‘ One 
of them trills softly in a clump of wild-rose bushes, 
as if asking permission to sing ; and then, his request 
being gladly granted, he leaps up boldly to a twig 
of a sapling, and breaks into a torrent of melody. 
Another, in precisely the same tune, answers him 
farther down the stream, the two executing a sort 
of fugue. A third leaps about on the dry grass 
that fringes a ditch, twitters merrily for a while, 
then flies to a small oak-tree near by, and — well, 
such a loud, rollicking, tempestuous song I have 
