138 RAMBLES ABOUT HOME. 



tral New Jersey fifty-four birds, resident and migratory, 

 that can be considered as strictly singing birds. These 

 may with perfect propriety be classed in accordance with 

 their peculiar temperaments, as VIVACIOUS, SPRIGHTLY, or 

 DULL ; meaning thereby to express three degrees of ani- 

 mation in their songs. As instances of the first may be 

 named the house-wren and Baltimore oriole, the song- 

 sparrow and indigo bird belong to the second class, and 

 in the third are to be found the bluebird and the peewee. 

 Now, the songs of these birds can not in any sense be 

 looked upon as a uniform series of notes a stereotyped 

 whistle or an unvarying warble, as is said of them by 

 the late Dr. Holland in the following stanzas : 



" The robin repeats his two musical words, 

 The meadow-lark whistles his one refrain ; 

 And steadily, over and over again, 

 The same song swells from a hundred birds." 



" Bobolink, chick-a-dee, blackbird, and jay, 



Thrasher and woodpecker, cuckoo and wren, 

 Each sings its word or its phrase, and then 

 It has nothing further to sing or to say." 



But, as a matter of fact, they do have other songs to sing, 

 and do find plenty to say when occasion requires. While 

 as a rule the song of any bird, when once known, can 

 usually be recognized when heard a second time, yet this 

 is not always the case, for the reason that our songsters 

 do, at times, vary their notes in the most striking man- 

 ner. This is such a frequent occurrence, and is so uni- 

 versally true of our song-birds, as effectually to disprove 

 the assertion that they have " nothing further to sing or 

 to say." 



As has been said, the various songs of the fifty odd 

 kinds of singing birds can be readily placed under one 



