How to Attract the Birds 



others of their kind, showed a decided tendency 

 to repeat only the notes of the caged songsters 

 about them ; still, they used some inherited notes, 

 too, and these, with the inherited quality of voice, 

 made their song sufficiently characteristic of the 

 species to be recognizable. Many more experi- 

 ments are necessary, however, to prove with scien- 

 tific accuracy that a bird even partially inherits his 

 song. We know that expert trainers have taught the 

 bullfinch to whistle "Yankee Doodle." The mock- 

 ing-bird is by no means the only mimic. A certain 

 pet canary could so perfectly imitate the English 

 sparrows that came about his cage on the porch to 

 pick up the waste seed, that it was only by watching 

 the movements of the feathers on his throat that one 

 could believe it was he who was amusing himself by 

 imitating the chirpings and twitterings of an entire 

 sparrow flock. 



Probably a bird both inherits and acquires his 

 notes ; otherwise, how could we account for the many 

 variations of the same song rendered by different 

 birds of the same species? No two canaries in any 

 shop sing precisely alike, although all may have been 

 hatched in the same peasant's house in the Hartz 

 Mountains. In every case individuality reveals itself 

 in shrillness or mellowness of tone, in the low, 

 sweet, tender warble, or the sharp, almost vindictive 

 roundelay incessantly repeated with the evident de- 

 sire to overpower all rivals ; yet we recognize the 

 canary in each song. To the general characteristics 

 of the species we must add individuality of tempera- 

 ment and the training received from the individual's 

 associates before we can understand any bird's music. 



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