ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SONG-BIRDS. 127 



notes and calls could have been materialized and 

 made as palpable to the eye as they were to the ear, 

 I think they would have veiled the landscape and 

 darkened the day. There were big songs and little 

 songs, songs from the trees, the bushes, the ground, 

 the air, warbles, trills, chants, musical calls, and 

 squeals, etc. Near by in the foreground were the 

 cat-bird and the brown thrasher, the former in the 

 bushes, the latter on the top of a hickory. These 

 birds are related to the mocking-bird, and may be 

 called performers ; their songs are a series of vocal 

 feats, like the exhibition of an acrobat ; they throw 

 musical somersaults and turn and twist and contort 

 themselves in a very edifying manner, with now and 

 then a ventriloquial touch. The cat-bird is the more 

 shrill, supple, and feminine ; the thrasher the louder, 

 richer, and more audacious. The mate of the latter 

 had a nest, which I found in a field under the spread- 

 ing ground juniper. From several points along the 

 course of a bushy little creek there came a song, or 

 a melody of notes and calls, that also put me out 

 the tipsy, hodge-podge strain of the polyglot chat, 

 a strong, olive-backed, yellow-breasted, black-billed 

 bird, with a voice like that of a jay or a crow that had 

 been to school to a robin or an oriole a performer 

 sure to arrest your ear and sure to elude your eye. 

 There is no bird so afraid of being seen, or fonder of 

 being heard. 



The golden voice of the wood-thrush that came to 

 me from the border of the woods on my right was 



