72 IN BIRD LAND. 
The song was varied and lively, sometimes run- 
ning high in the scale, and had not that absent- 
minded air which marks the roundelay of the 
warbling vireo. It is much more intense and 
expressive, and some notes are quite like certain 
runs of the brown thrasher’s song. ‘The bird did 
two other things that were a surprise: he chattered 
and scolded much like the ruby-crowned kinglet. 
Then he caught a miller, and, as it was too large to 
be swallowed whole, placed it under his claws pre- 
cisely like a chickadee or blue jay, and pulled it to 
pieces. This was a new trick to me, nor have I 
ever read, in any of the bird manuals, of his taking 
his dinner in this way. 
The red-eyed vireo also chanted a little roundel 
that spring, as he pursued his journey northward, his 
song being slower in movement and less expressive 
and varied than that of his cousin just referred to. 
Indeed, the procession seemed to be especially 
musical during that spring. One day, in the last 
week in April, a new style of music rang out at the 
border of the woods, and I fairly trembled lest the 
jolly soloist should scud away before I could iden- 
tify him; but he had no intention of making his 
escape, and giving the credit of his vocal efforts to 
somebody else in the bird world. At length I got 
my glass upon him. He proved to be the purple 
finch, — rosy little Mozart that he was! For years 
he has passed through these woods with the vernal 
procession, but this was the first time he had ever 
been obliging enough to sing in my hearing. And 
