544 DAN BEARD'S ANIMAL BOOK 



and has this moment interrupted my work with his in- 

 sistent and oft-repeated roundelay. We have had a 

 cold rain and his feathers are all wet, but he sings as 

 if he was wound up with an eight day clockwork attach- 

 ment; he is sitting on the bare branches of an old apple 

 tree, but to catch his message I must work my pencil 

 with great rapidity, often losing time and place and 

 again making more marks than there are notes in his 

 song. But by the exercise of patience, and testing, and 

 retesting my notation, I find the result to be as follows : 



quick time slower 



Whoo Whew, Whew, Chu, Chu, Chu, Weak-ah Wee-oh ! 



or, 

 quick time slower 



Weeo, Wheoo, Wheoo, Wheoo, Chi, Chu, Chee Chu Week ! 



Once or twice the rose-tinted bard added a little flour- 

 ish at the end of the song, but he failed to repeat it 

 often enough for me to catch, and translate it into Eng- 

 lish. That the flourish belongs to the regular song is 

 very doubtful. I have known other birds, when they 

 felt in the humor, io add unexpected variations to their 

 regular song. One white-throated sparrow, that spent 

 many winters in my back-yard in Flushing, when he felt 

 particularly happy would end his plaintive whistle with 

 an unmistakable trill, but I never knew any other white 

 throat to a-ttempt anything in that line. 



Since writing the above notes the temperature has 

 grown balmy and the change in the weather has pro- 



