THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



wood where I passed daily from the middle of May to 

 the middle of August. The favorite perch of the bird 

 was on a dead branch in the top of a beech-tree, 

 and on a particular part of the branch. Day after 

 day and at different hours I noticed the little song- 

 ster perched on his dead branch singing his brief, 

 simple song. I know his mate had a nest somewhere 

 in a low bush within earshot of the singer, but I 

 failed to find it. Long after the young must have 

 flown he kept up his song from the tree-top. In early 

 August he was still singing six times a minute when 

 he sang, but the intervals between his periods of song 

 grew longer and longer. His store of musical energy 

 was slowly running down. Not often now did he sing 

 a minute at a time. 



A song sparrow that sang near me during the 

 morning hours through May, June, and July, and 

 that had at least five distinct songs which he would 

 sing one after the other, repeating each one from ten 

 to twenty times, began to run down in August. His 

 different songs lost their distinctness and emphasis. 

 It was as if they had faded and become blurred. 



Nearly all our songbirds are equally prodigal of 

 song during the spring and early summer. It is the 

 methodical and untiring character of a machine 

 rather than conscious effort. 



On the 25th of July at five in the afternoon I heard 

 the hermit thrush repeating his strain with mechan- 

 ical regularity ten times a minute. Undoubtedly he 

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