Making New Friends 29 



toward me. However, when once you really become 

 acquainted with a bird, it seems to lose part of its shy- 

 ness, and so after a time I often had the Harris sparrows 

 in plain view. One of their characteristic habits was to 

 stand at full height on the top of a brush heap, with tail 

 lifted, crest feathers erect, and eyes wide open, the picture 

 of wild alertness. In such poses they are indeed hand- 

 some birds. 



It was March 5, 1898, when I heard the first song of 

 this sparrow, and even then it was only a fragment of a 

 song. But, the weather remaining pleasant, the six* 

 teenth of the month brought a fine concert. The bird's 

 song was a surprise to me. It began with a prolonged 

 run so much like the opening tremolo of the white- 

 throated sparrow that it might have led the most expert 

 ornithologist astray. The fact is, I looked around for 

 quite a while in search of a white-throat, thinking him 

 still a little out of tune, and therefore unable to finish his 

 chanson; and I was undeceived only by the singing of 

 several Harris sparrows that with unusual boldness had 

 perched in plain sight. The resemblance ceased, however, 

 with the opening notes, for the western bird did not add 

 the sweet, rhythmic triad of his white-throated cousin, 

 the closing part of his song being only a somewhat 

 labored trill of no distinct character, and not fulfilling 

 the promise of his initial strain. 



In the concerts of these birds and frequently many 

 of them would be trilling at the same time they sang in 

 several different keys, some of them striking the treble 



