7 o SUMMER 



songs are little set pieces of more or less constant length and 

 time. They are more easily expressed and learned. The 

 chaffinch or the vellowhammer are good types of the set 



song. The chaf- 

 finch in captivity 

 and under instruc- 

 tion will learn to 

 lengthen out his 

 piece by a bar and 

 more, but in nature 

 the rippling trill, 



suggestive with the tinkling rise in the last two notes of a 

 fountain, is generally of an even length. An excellent 

 reproduction, so far as pause goes, of the yellow-bunting's 

 song is given by Witchell, thus : 



But certainly many buntings do not ascend in the first 

 notes of the song with this regularity. Most, we should say, 

 do not rise at all, in the first four notes at any rate. The 

 subject of birds' song and its relation to music is doubtless 

 worth study ; but to the field naturalist the more absorbing 

 pursuit is to separate the call notes, alarm notes, and songs, 

 and to read in them the language of birds. The more you 

 listen to birds at nesting-time the more clearly you discover 

 how wide is the range of expression, one might say, of conver- 

 sation. In their songs, which most arrest our attention, lies but 

 half their power of articulate utterance. But the learning of 

 birds' songs and, so to speak, words, is only easy and fruitful 

 in the early morning. For the rest of the day, with the ex- 

 ception of a period of evening ecstasy very different from 



