42 Birds of Oregon and Washington 



wonderfully incessant singer ! No bird any- 

 where has a fuller or richer note ; none such 

 variety of songs, except, perhaps, the Mocking- 

 bird ; none like this bird makes varied and joy- 

 ous melody in summer and in winter, too ; in 

 rain, in snow, in cold. Not a day in the winter 

 of 1900 and 1901, have Meadowlarks upon a 

 hill near Portland failed to voice the happiness, 

 or bid depart the gloom, of their human neigh- 

 bors. No one knows the bird until he has lis- 

 tened to the many different songs that he sings 

 while perched upon tree or fence, or again upon 

 a telegraph pole, or even upon the ridgepole of a 

 house ; nor yet unless he has caught a peculiar 

 .and most rapturous song while the bird is on the 

 wing a song so unlike those we are accustomed 

 to that it seems not to have been uttered by a 

 Meadowlark at all. 



The variety of the songs of the Meadowlark 

 upon this coast, counting songs in different 

 localities, seems limitless. The birds in one 

 locality may not exceed twenty varieties of song, 

 but a few miles in any direction will add, prob- 

 ably, twenty more, etc. I have heard at Forest 

 Grove, in Oregon, five new songs from the same 



