ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SONG-BIRDS 125 



songster is ready to come out and give all a chance 

 to hear his full and completed strain, the European 

 wood-lark will need to look to his laurels. These 

 two birds are our best warblers, and yet they are 

 probably seldom heard, except by persons who know 

 and admire them. If the two kinglets could also 

 be included in our common New England summer 

 residents, our warbler music would only pale before 

 the song of Philomela herself. The English red- 

 start evidently surpasses ours as a songster, and we 

 have no bird to match the English wood-lark above 

 referred to, which is said to be but little inferior 

 to the skylark; but, on the other hand, besides the 

 sparrows and vireos, already mentioned, they have 

 no songsters to match our oriole, our orchard star- 

 ling, our catbird, our brown thrasher (second only 

 to the mockingbird), our chewink, our snowbird, our 

 cow-bunting, our bobolink, and our yellow-breasted 

 chat. As regards the swallows of the two countries, 

 the advantage is rather on the side of the American. 

 Our chimney swallow, with his incessant, silvery, 

 rattling chipper, evidently makes more music than 

 the corresponding house swallow of Europe ; while our 

 purple martin is not represented in the Old World 

 avifauna at all. And yet it is probably true that a 

 dweller in England hears more bird-music through- 

 out the year than a dweller in this country, and that 

 which, in some respects, is of a superior order. 



In the first place, there is not so much of it lost 

 "upon the desert air," upon the wild, unlistening 

 solitudes. The English birds are more domestic 



