Vol. XXIX 

 1912 



J Wright, Morning Awakening and Even-Song. oil 



It does not appear that cloudy conditions have had an influence 

 to any extent in delaying the time of early song. The records 

 indicate that the early-singing sparrows and flycatchers, the Robin 

 and other thrushes sang as early on some clouded mornings as on 

 some fair mornings and in some instances even a few minutes 

 earlier. Neither has the moon appeared to exert any influence, 

 as it has usually been either the time of new moon, or a day or two 

 before, or when it was in the first quarter, in all which phases there 

 has been no moonlight at the time of morning-awakening. On 

 four occasions when there was moonlight the sky was clouded, and 

 the records indicate that the earliest singers were a trifle later in 

 beginning to sing, the cloudiness offsetting whatever gain of light 

 from the moon there may have been. It is a question, not answered 

 by the records, whether bright moonlight influences the early song- 

 sters to sing earlier than when the sky is only starlit, since none of 

 the records have been obtained under moonlight. It seems, how- 

 ever, not unlikely that bright moonlight has no effect to awaken 

 earlier the early-singing birds, but that they instinctively await 

 the first glimmer of daybreak before singing. 



The combined records indicate that the birds of thirty-three 

 species averaged to sing before the time of earliest sunrise, that 

 being 4.02 o'clock. Included among these are nine members of the 

 sparrow family, five of the common sparrows having place among 

 the earliest eleven songsters; all six members of the thrush family 

 from the Robin as the third bird to the Olive-backed Thrush as 

 the seventeenth; the five common flycatchers, these having place 

 among the earliest nineteen songsters; Black-billed Cuckoo, Ruby- 

 throated Hummingbird, Crow, Barn Swallow, Red-eyed Vireo, 

 Blue-headed Vireo, Chickadee; and six species of warblers, all 

 which have place among the last sixteen of the thirty-three species 

 which sing before sunrise. The Oven-bird, the earliest warbler, 

 does not average to sing before 3.29 o'clock, or thirty -three minutes 

 after the Song Sparrow and twenty-seven minutes after the Robin. 

 The Redstart, the next earliest warbler, does not sing until seven- 

 teen minutes later. Then in the sixteen minutes preceding sun- 

 rise five other warblers begin to sing. Still five other species of 

 warblers have not been heard until after the sun has risen. Per- 

 haps in other locations some of the warbler voices would have been 



