EACH AFTER ITS KIND 



to all country people, because it lives nearer our 

 dwellings. It is an asset of every country garden and 

 lawn and near-by roadside, and it occasionally 

 spends the winter in the Hudson River Valley when 

 you have, carelessly or thoughtfully, left a harvest 

 of weed-seeds for it to subsist upon. It comes before 

 the vesper in the spring, and its simple song on a 

 bright March or April morning is one of the most 

 welcome of all vernal sounds. In its manners it is 

 more fussy and suspicious than the vesper, and it 

 worries a great deal about its nest if one comes any- 

 where in its vicinity. It is one of the familiar, half- 

 domesticated birds that suggest home to us wher- 

 ever we see it. 



The song sparrow is remarkable above any other 

 bird I know for its repertoire of songs. Few of our 

 birds have more than one song, except in those cases 

 when a flight song is added during the mating sea- 

 son, as with the oven-bird, the purple finch, the 

 goldfinch, the meadowlark, and a few others. But 

 every song sparrow has at least five distinct songs 

 that differ from one another as much as any five 

 lyrics by the same poet differ. The bird from its 

 perch on the bush or tree will repeat one song over 

 and over, usually five or six times a minute, for two 

 or three minutes, then it will change to another 

 strain quite different in time and measure, and re- 

 peat it for a dozen or more times ; then it drops into 

 still another and yet another and another, each 

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