A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 241 



though it breeds in the bkie-grass counties. I 

 saw only two specimens of the bird in all my 

 wanderings. The Virginia cardinal Avas com- 

 mon, and in places the yellow-breasted chat was 

 lieard. Once I heard from across a broad field 

 a burst of bobolink melody from a score or more 

 of throats — a flock of the birds probably paus- 

 ing on their way north. In Chicago I was told 

 that the Illinois bobolink had a different song 

 from the New England species, but I could de- 

 tect no essential difference. The song of cer- 

 tain birds, notably that of the bobolink, seems 

 to vary slightly in different localities, and also 

 to change during a series of years. I no longer 

 hear the exact bobolink song which I heard in 

 my boyhood, in the localities where I then 

 heard it. Not a season passes but I hear marked 

 departures in the songs of our birds from what 

 appears to be the standard song of a given species. 



