INDIGO BUNTING. 



along the roadside, for the little fellow is one of the 

 commonest birds of the highway. But he has no gift of 

 melody, and of sentiment he knows nothing. His is a 

 canarylike voice, pitched almost beyond the keyboard 

 limit of the piano, and composed of a series of loud, 

 ringing metallic chirp-notes of very nearly equal value, 

 which slightly diminish in volume as the song nears the 

 end. Expressed by a group of dashes (these, rather than 

 dots, would seem to be nearer a good representation 

 of far-reaching chirps), the song should appear thus: 



\///\\//\\ 



He always introduces his song with a pianissimo 

 downward chirp, then proceeds loudly with two or 

 three upward chirps, continues with a series which 

 alternates up and down, and finishes with three (some- 

 times two or four) monotone notes which are remark- 

 ably suggestive of the words fish, fish, fish! He is 

 an indefatigable songster, and during the nuptial period 

 it is common for him to sing at the rate of five songs a 

 minute for an hour at a time. His interims, too, are 

 short, and it would be a conservative estimate at this 

 rate to say the song is repeated (without any variation, 

 or with trifling variation) not less than two thousand 

 times in a day! Of course, the form of the song that 

 is, the rising and falling inflections of the voice which are 

 properly called chirps, their repetitions, the diminuendo, 

 and the few monotones together with the comparatively 

 equal value of all the notes is always the same; but the 

 particular song which is illustrated by the dashes above, 

 and again represented by this record 



is only one of a great number belonging to the Indigo 

 Bunting's repertoire, for no two birds sing exactly alike. 

 There is a striking similarity, though, in the songs of 

 particular families. I have become familiar with the 



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