FIELD AND STUDY 



had sailed away and disappeared behind the woods, 

 the bird went on with his singing. The red-eyed 

 vireo in a wood near by was repeating his song much 

 more rapidly; there was barely a perceptible interval 

 between its phrases. This bird sings as he feeds, like 

 the warblers, and he keeps up a continuous strain 

 of cheery notes nearly all summer. He comes pretty 

 near being a perennial songster. 



I conclude, then, that the singing of birds bears 

 little or no analogy to human singing. It is confined 

 to one sex and to a particular season, and is simply 

 the overflowing of a universal impulse in living 

 nature. 



In the care of their young, birds show something 

 much nearer to human emotion than in their song. 

 Their untimely signs of alarm often betray them, 

 but in the agony of their grief they are very human. 



Yesterday, on hearing a great commotion among 

 the birds in the fruit and shade trees in front of my 

 house, I looked up and saw a crow making off with 

 a young, unfledged robin in his beak, pursued by a 

 mob of birds vociferating loudly. A pair of robins, 

 one of whose young the black devil had seized, 

 screamed in agony. It was the ordinary alarm note 

 uttered under such a pressure of excitement that it 

 became a shrill scream like that which a human 

 mother might utter if she saw an eagle or a wolf 

 carrying away her child. There can be little doubt, 

 I thought, that the cases are closely parallel: those 



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