Birds by Land and Sea 



the American ornithologist. Such a discovery would 

 say little enough for the discriminating powers of any 

 person of intelligence, but if the song had not called 

 for special remark on the part of British observers 

 until then, it argues a strange callousness in them. It 

 is a song which it would seem impossible to overlook. 

 Burroughs naturally compared it with the songs of 

 American birds, stating that the willow-wren was 

 the only British bird which " exhibited to the full 

 the best qualities of the American songsters.'* 

 White, of Selborne, however, in his accurate, if 

 brief way, had described the song as a "sweet, 

 plaintive note," and in doing so showed that atten- 

 tion to essentials which marked all his work. Sweet 

 and plaintive it is ; sweet with the purity and 

 refinement of the song of the robin ; and if the 

 willow- warbler lacks the versatility in phrasing of 

 the latter, its song is also free from the abrupt, 

 hesitating manner which often marks the robin's 

 delivery. The willow-warbler, however, has but one 

 song, repeated time after time without variation. 

 Beginning with a few detached notes, exquisitely 

 pure and penetrating, it descends through a series 

 of more subdued ones, which press gently one upon 

 another in a true warble-like limpid wavelets of 

 sound, until it passes into silence as if it were the 

 natural continuation of its gradually expiring notes. 

 Some of the plaintiveness of the song lies in this 

 perfect passing away of delicately modulated sound ; 

 some in the song itself, which has in it that wistful 



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