PAPER SON ZOOLOGY 167 



senses must wonder ever after that he could have been 

 deaf so long in the world of delightful sounds. One's ears 

 are truly "unstopped" when one begins to cultivate the 

 listening habit, 



To the untrained ear a bird chorus offers but a jumble of 

 sounds, somewhat like the tangle of colors seen on the 

 wrong side of a piece of embroidery. The trained ear dis- 

 entangles the various sounds and sees the pattern clearly. 



It is a rare gift to be able to imitate bird notes. No in- 

 strument but the human voice can do it to perfection. The 

 musical intervals between the notes of many bird songs are 

 often so small and indefinite that they cannot be satisfac- 

 torily reproduced in musical notation, although attempts 

 have been made to reproduce some of the more elusive 

 songs. The best that can be done in such cases is merely 

 to suggest the sound. 



One might think that those persons who translate bird 

 songs and calls into human speech are highly imaginative ; 

 but the reverse is probably the case. In reality they lack 

 tlie ability to think of a bird as a complete entity, apart 

 from its merely incidental relation to human life. In this 

 class I would not place those writers who have used 

 phrases of our speech as suggestive aids to the identifica- 

 tion of bird songs. Such phrases are often a distinct help ; 

 as when Thoreau writes in his "Summer'' that the country 

 girls in Massachusetts hear the song sparrow say, "JVIaids, 

 maids, maids, hang on your teakettle, teakettle, teakettle- 

 ettle-ettle." The rhythm of "Witcliery, witchery, witchery" 

 is easy to recognize in the song of the Maryland yellow- 

 throat, as is "Cheerily, cheerily, cheer-up, cheer-up'' in that 

 of the robin, or "Drop it, drop it, Cover-it-up, cover-it-up" 

 in the brown thrasher's melody. Xor is it over-fanciful to 

 name birds according to the sound of their call -notes; as 

 the towhee (or chewink), the chickadee, the chebec, the 

 pewee, the phoebe, etc. But with the exception of a few such 

 callnotes, when someone tells you that such-and-such a bird 

 always says so-and-so you may have your doubts. Most 

 birds have a greater variety of calls and songs than the 

 untrained listener would imagine. 



I was once told that the meadowlark always said a cer- 

 tain phrase, and that if one listened for that phrase one 

 could not fail to recognize the bird. So I listened accord- 



