ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SONG-BIRDS 115 



The duke does not mention by name all the 

 birds he heard while in this country. He was evi- 

 dently influenced in his opinion of them by the fact 

 that our common sandpiper appeared to be a silent 

 bird, whereas its British cousin, the sandpiper of 

 the lakes and streams of the Scottish Highlands, is 

 very loquacious, and the "male bird has a continu- 

 ous and most lively song." Either the duke must 

 have seen our bird in one of its silent and medita- 

 tive moods, or else, in the wilds of Canada where 

 his grace speaks of having seen it, the sandpiper is 

 a more taciturn bird than it is in the States. True, 

 its call-notes are not incessant, and it is not prop- 

 erly a song-bird any more than the British species 

 is; but it has a very pretty and pleasing note as it 

 flits up and down our summer streams, or runs 

 along on their gray, pebbly, and bowlder- strewn 

 shallows. I often hear its calling and piping at 

 night during its spring migratings. Indeed, we 

 have no silent bird that I am aware of, though our 

 pretty cedar-bird has, perhaps, the least voice of 

 any. A lady writes me that she has heard the 

 hummingbird sing, and says she is not to be put 

 down, even if I were to prove by the anatomy of 

 the bird's vocal organs that a song was impossible 

 to it. 



Argyll says that, though he was in the woods and 

 fields of Canada and of the States in the richest 

 moment of the spring, he heard little of that burst 

 of song which in England comes from the blackcap, 

 and the garden warbler, and the whitethroat, and 



