YELLOW-THROATED VIRBO. 



tice, he sticks to that locustlike buzz which I hav 

 described as reedlike. As for what he says, that is again 

 a matter of opinion. Mr. Chapman gives the syllables as 

 follows, but I place them up and down off the line to in- 

 dicate the pitch: 



"See here; are 



me; I'm where 



you ? " 



At the time of the Boer War I imagined this interesting 

 bird was telling me all about it in the following way: 



STafeking. Sfodder river. Euluwsyo. SJoldppo. Boer tvtrf 



Certainly one finds the word Buluwayo fits a particular 

 group of four notes remarkably well, though they are 

 fused together almost inseparably. 



There is no variation from this kind of singing so far 

 as I am aware, except that the little fellow occasionally 

 talks to himself sotto voce, as many another bird does, 

 when his remarks become musically incoherent. I rec- 

 ollect whistling to him one day, in his own fashion, 

 when we met in the Botanic Garden, Cambridge, and to 

 my infinite surprise he dropped his stereotyped song, 

 and ran rippling along among a lot of trills and warbles, 

 pianissimo et gracioso! That was a surprise, and I 

 wondered whether it was meant for a tender love ditty, 

 with myself mistaken for the charming Juliet I Perhaps 

 so, who can tell? 



As for the stereotyped song of the Yellow-throat, that, 

 like all the other Vireos' songs, is very uncertain in 

 pitch; one is never sure about the key, for one group of 

 notes may suggest B flat and another F. But if I should 

 render the melody with an accompaniment as one might 

 reasonably suppose the bird would render it if he only 

 knew how to stick to a given key and sing with the piano, 

 the result would be something like the following coherent 

 melodic form: 



ISO 



