IN FIELD AND WOOD 



a day, extending, probably, over one hundred 

 days. 



The red-eyed vireo sings almost continuously 

 throughout the greater part of the day, from May to 

 September. During the midsummer days, as in my 

 walk I pass along the road by a beech wood, I hear 

 a red-eye singing, singing continuously till two or 

 three o'clock in the afternoon. It is like a boy whis- 

 tling at his work; only no boy could whistle so long 

 and so uninterruptedly. He pauses only briefly now 

 and then to catch and eat a worm. This done, he 

 wipes his bill on a limb, and resumes his warble as he 

 resumes his hunt. The vireo is wound up to go the 

 whole season, and there is no failure, though during 

 the latter part of the summer his warble is less con- 

 tinuous. When I time him I find he repeats his strain 

 of three or four notes about every second, which, 

 if he sang only five hours a day, would bring the 

 number up into the tens of thousands, and the sea- 

 son of three or four months would bring it up into 

 the millions. I have heard a phoebe-bird in the 

 early July morning repeat her call every second 

 from dawn to sunrise, probably two thousand times 

 or more, morning after morning. When the mating 

 fever is at its height in early June, I have heard the 

 whip-poor-will vociferate its name eight or nine 

 hundred times in as many seconds without the 

 slightest pause. 



One season an indigo-bird sang on the edge of the 

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