THE WATER-OUZEL 283 



notes, embroidered with delicate trills which fade 

 and melt in long slender cadences. In a general 

 way his music is that of the streams refined and 

 spiritualized. The deep booming notes of the falls 

 are in it, the trills of rapids, the gurgling of mar 

 gin eddies, the low whispering of level reaches, and 

 the sweet tinkle of separate drops oozing from the 

 ends of mosses and falling into tranquil pools. 



The Ouzel never sings in chorus with other birds, 

 nor with his kind, but only with the streams. And 

 like flowers that bloom beneath the surface of the 

 ground, some of our favorite's best song-blossoms 

 never rise above the surface of the heavier music 

 of the water. I have often observed him singing in 

 the midst of beaten spray, his music completely 

 buried beneath the water's roar ; yet I knew he was 

 surely singing by his gestures and the movements 

 of his bill. 



His food, as far as I have noticed, consists of all 

 kinds of water insects, which in summer are chiefly 

 procured along shallow margins. Here he wades 

 about ducking his head under water and deftly 

 turning over pebbles and fallen leaves with his bill, 

 seldom choosing to go into deep water where he 

 has to use his wings in diving. 



He seems to be especially fond of the larvae of 

 mosquitos, found in abundance attached to the 

 bottom of smooth rock channels where the cur 

 rent is shallow. When feeding in such places 

 he wades up-stream, and often while his head is 

 under water the swift current is deflected upward 

 along the glossy curves of his neck and shoulders, 

 in the form of a clear, crystalline shell, which fairly 



