VEERY. 



call-note, very loud and strongly burred, to which he 

 commonly resorts when annoyed or alarmed. 



OVA 



oper note. 

 Hum tower note. 



In Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway'a North American Birds 

 (vol. i., pg. 10) is this account of the song: " There is a 

 solemn harmony and a beautiful expression which com- 

 bine to make the song of this Thrush surpass that of all 

 the other American Wood Thrushes " ; it consists of 

 44 an inexpressibly delicate metallic utterance of the syl- 

 lables ta-wed'ah, ta-weelah, ta-wtt'dh, twil'ah, accom- 

 panied by a fine trill which renders it truly seductive. 

 The last two notes are uttered in a soft and subdued un- 

 dertone, thereby producing, in effect, an echo of the 

 others." This description coincides perfectly with my 

 first notation which represents with tolerable accuracy 

 that duplication of the tones which the author calls an 

 echo. Nelson considers the Veery's song the most spir- 

 itual one of all the wild- wood singers, and perhaps he is 

 right, for the bird sings a vesper hymn to the dying day, 

 and unless he stirred the deepest feelings of tfce heart at 

 such a solemn hour, we could never have had these 

 beautiful lines from the pen of Dr. van Dyke: 



" The moonbeams over Arno's vale in silver flood were 



pouring, 

 When first I heard the nightingale a long-lost love 



deploring. 

 So passionate, so full of pain, it sounded strange and 



eerie; 

 I longed to hear a simpler strain the wood-notes of 



the Veery. 



247 



