vol. xxxn j Geneml Noles 241 



White-throated Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow, and Vesper Sparrow so 

 generally sing a few songs before the Robin that it is quite impossible to 

 regard all this earliest singing as other than the singing of the birds in 

 response to the appearance of dawn, suffusing the eastern sky with beautiful 

 soft light and announcing departing night and approaching day. The 

 records indicate that the awakening of the earliest singing birds is gradual, 

 but none the less a genuine awakening, although they give their songs only 

 occasionally in this earliest singing and reserve more demonstrative singing 

 until the light of day has increased. So regular are these earliest songs 

 from the several species of earliest singers that the idea that they are songs 

 of the night is quite untenable. Songs of the night are few, irregular, 

 and adventitious, due to the caprice of the bird, occasionally heard, but 

 not to be regularly looked for and with certainty heard. These earliest 

 songs after the first light of dawn are unfailingly given and can be looked 

 for with certainty of realization. 



In the hour preceding visible dawn, which in days of earliest sunrise at 

 Jefferson is 2.30 o'clock or a little before, I have very, very few times heard 

 any expression of song, yet I have often been awake at one o'clock and 

 remained awake listening carefully until I have gone out at two o'clock or a 

 few minutes thereafter. Whereas, as the time of 2.30 approaches, it is 

 usual to hear the first songs from one, two, or three birds which are within 

 range of hearing, and these songs are followed by repetitions from the same 

 birds or from other birds at infrequent intervals for a time, until their 

 awakening is more complete. So it has been my practice to be out shortly 

 after 2 o'clock, when not before; in season for these first responses to the 

 break of day, and experience has shown that the birds' awakening begins 

 with these songs, given when the dawn has already visibly brightened the 

 eastern sky. 



The Ovenbird's early flight song, which is heard quite unfailingly at 

 dawn, is its twilight song, equally so in the morning as in the evening and 

 late afternoon. It can be depended upon, at least in the woodlands of 

 Jefferson Highland, and it must be borne in mind that my testimony on 

 the whole subject of the morning awakening is the result of my experience 

 in this mountain hamlet, where there is broad expanse of sky and complete 

 silence reigns, when the day opens, broken only by the birds as they awake 

 and sing. — Horace W. Wright, Boston, Mass. 



