How to Attract the Birds 



gushing lyric. Again, impossible ! Just as there 

 are intervals in the African negro's melodies too 

 subtle to be recorded on paper, although they are 

 caught by the ear of each generation from its pre- 

 decessor and passed on correctly to posterity, so there 

 is an elusive quality in bird music defying both 

 scientific analysis and translation into set musical 

 terms. As well try to convey music itself through 

 a dictionary's definitions of it as to catch the rol- 

 licking, bubbling song of the bobolink on a printed 

 page. 



Many beginners in bird study write to the orni- 

 thologist, asking him to name the songster whose 

 music is laboriously described on an enclosed sheet. 

 Staff, added lines, clef, time, bars, notes, sharps, 

 flats, naturals, rests, accents all are as carefully set 

 down as if the inquirer were copying an intricate 

 Bach fugue ; yet not once out of ten times can the 

 bird be named correctly by its written song alone, 

 no matter how well up in field practice the orni- 

 thologist may be : the quality is lacking, and that is 

 the very essence of the song. Lacking that, some 

 description of size, plumage, or habit must be 

 mentioned to aid identification. 



CALL THE BIRDS TO YOU 



But catching bird music by ear is a different 

 matter from writing it. Every farmer's boy knows 

 that by crowing like his pet rooster he can make 

 him reply, and that first one cock, then another, 

 will echo the challenge, until every rooster in the 

 neighborhood is set to flapping his wings and crow- 



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