Bird-Songs Interpreted 



translation in order that the bird-student 

 may know it. 



The least flycatcher is another of our 

 wood-birds whose note there is no mistak 

 ing. Not much of a singer is he, to be sure, 

 with his dry, crisp, two-syllabled phrase. 

 But you may know him, so to speak, by his 

 destination, since all summer long he an 

 nounces, with a curiously positive futility, 

 that he is for Quebec, Quebec a city he 

 will never see, since early in October he is 

 off for a climate very different from that of 

 Canada. 



The red-winged blackbird has a very rich 

 and positive song, that is easily phrased. 

 There is a reedlike quality in it, resembling 

 the tone of a clarinet, and when the bird sits 

 in the fork of a swaying alder, in some rank 

 swamp, with his red shoulders flashing in 

 the sun, and cries, "A romp for me! A romp 

 for me!" you can not easily mistake his 

 identity. "But there is often such a chorus 

 of these gregarious and sociable birds that 

 the individual notes are quite lost track of, 

 and you can hear nothing but a rich con 

 fusion of sounds, like a disorderly assem 

 blage of contraltos. 



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