THE SONGS OF BIRDS 



a very stiff, straight attitude, which does, indeed, 

 give him a wild, startled look. 



Our woodpeckers do not sing, but instead they 

 beat a drum in the shape of a dry, resonant limb, 

 which seems to be expressive of the same breeding- 

 instinct. The flicker has a long, oft-repeated call 

 which he alternates with his drumming, and that 

 is one of the most welcome of vernal sounds. The 

 drumming of the yellow-bellied woodpecker is the 

 most unusual of them all; the bird delivers five 

 strokes on his drum, three of them rapidly, and then 

 two with longer intervals between. This variation 

 gives it a little touch of art. The drums of the pile- 

 ated and the ivory-billed woodpeckers I have never 

 heard. 



All our song-birds sing with mechanical regularity 

 and persistence. It is as if they were instruments 

 wound up to go off at a certain time, and to con- 

 tinue for a certain time. I know of no species that 

 during the breeding-season does not repeat its song 

 many thousands of times a day or night. 



Every morning in my walk I hear a vesper spar- 

 row on the edge of a pasture repeating his song from 

 the top of a thorn-tree at the rate of seven times a 

 minute, without any variations that I can detect. 

 One morning when I was timing him he suddenly 

 stopped without changing his position. On looking 

 up I saw a big hen-hawk just issuing from the woods 

 two or three hundred yards above. After the hawk 



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