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pewee, wood thrush, goldfinch and grackle; also they gave 

 many queer sounds resembling those produced by parrots. Mr. 

 Bromley of Southbridge, Massachusetts, reports that he has 

 heard the starling successfully imitate several of these notes, 

 and also that of the phoebe, and that he saw one starling 

 apparently attempting the notes of the whippoorwill. 



As a novice will see colors in the wrong places, or fail to see 

 colors in the right places, so he will hear birds wrongly, or fail 

 to hear them at all. 



Day by day people canoeing on the river pass my window, 

 while the note of the bittern booms over the river meadows. 

 It may be heard a mile, yet they never hear it; or rather, they 

 are not conscious of hearing it, or they mistake it for the sound 

 of a wooden pump. As evening falls, night herons call and 

 croak along the river, but these people do not hear the raucous 

 cries, or rather, .they do not notice them, or perhaps they 

 ascribe them to dogs. The student of birds soon learns to dis- 

 tinguish such sounds as these, but he cannot realize immediately 

 that the song of the grasshopper sparrow is not that of one of 

 the insects of the field, nor does he learn at once to hear the 

 faint chirps of the migrating host of wood warblers which pass 

 over or through the country twice each year nearly unnoticed. 



An ornithologist if stricken blind, but endowed with perfect 

 hearing, might still get an approximate idea of the number of 

 birds of most species resident in a locality, for most birds are 

 vociferous at times, and some much of the time. 



Many people, however, have great difficulty in recognizing 

 or remembering bird notes. Others are affected with tone 

 deafness, and are unable to differentiate between tones and 

 calls of an entirely different quality. Many persons of middle 

 age who can hear ordinary conversation cannot distinguish the 

 notes of warblers and other small birds at a distance, as all 

 such notes, pitched higher than the upper octaves of the 

 piano, are of such fine quality that they make little impression 

 on the eardrums of those whose hearing is at all impaired. 



In studying bird songs the notebook is indispensable. Write 

 down in syllables what the bird seems to say as you hear it at 

 the time. Accent it as the bird accents it, and if you are 

 musical you may even get an approximation of it by note. 



