The Birds’ Calendar 
Half of the charm of bird-songs is in the 
fact that in their varying qualities they repro- 
duce such diverse scenes in nature. ‘There is a 
noonday brightness in the purple finch’s melo- 
dy, whose radiant notes are like the sunbeams 
playing among the tremulous leaves. In the 
wood thrush there is indeed no overpowering 
ecstasy as in the ardent finch, but what a rich, 
reposeful dignity—a liquid coolness in that 
rippling cadence-phrase, the song far excel- 
lence of twilight and deep woods. 
A bird that comes very enthusiastically in- 
troduced, but with which, I regret to say, I 
have only a passing acquaintance as yet, is a 
handsome, gifted, and striking individual, re- 
nowned in prose and poetry as a most dashing, 
happy-go-lucky sort of fellow, a feathered ex- 
travaganza, an intoxicated soloist, an artistic 
comedian—the bobolink, called in his south- 
ern winter quarters the ‘‘ rice-bird,’’ from the 
character of his diet, and in the Middle States 
on his migrations the ‘‘ reed-bird.”’ 
I accidentally discovered only two of them 
this summer in watching a large flock of red- 
winged blackbirds, with whom they seemed to 
have fallen in company, and it was then too 
late in the season to witness and hear their pe- 
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