BIIID9. 



217 



took to describe beautiful nature, has contributed to raise its re- 

 ptitiitioii. " The nip;htinRalc," says Pliny, " that, for fifteen 

 days and nights, hid in the thickest shades, continues her note 

 without intermission, deserves our attention and wonder. How 



buoyant fraiety of Iiis action is no less fascinating than his sonif. He sweeps 

 round with enthusiastic ecstasy, lie mounts and descends :vs his song swells 

 or dies away ; he bounds aloft, as Bartram says, with the celerity of an ar- 

 row, as if to recover or recal his very soul, expired in the last elevated 

 strain. A bystander might suppose that the whole feathered tribes had as- 

 sembled together on a trial of skill ; each striving to produce his utmost 

 effect, so perfect are his imitations. He often deceives the sportsman, and 

 even birds themselves are sometimes imposed upcm by this admirable mimic. 

 In confinement he loses little of the power or energy of his song. He 

 whistles for the dog; CxsnT starts up, wags his tail, and runs to meet his 

 master. He cries like a hurt chicken, and the hen hurries about, with fea- 

 thers on end, to protect her injiued brood. He repeats the tune taught 

 liim, though it be of considerable length, with great accuracy. He runs 

 over tlie notes of the canary, and of the red bird, with such superior execu- 

 tion and effect, that the mortified songsters confess his triumph by their si- 

 lence. His fondness for vai-iety, some suppose to injure his song. His imi- 

 tations of the brown thrush are often interrupted by the crowing of cocks ; 

 and his exquisite warblings after the blue bird, are mingled with the scream- 

 ing of swallows, or the cackling of hens. During moonlight, both in the 

 wild and tame state, he sings the whole night long. The hunters, in their 

 night excursions, know that the moon is rising the instant they begin to 

 hear his delightful solo. After Shakspeare, Barrington attributes in part 

 the exquisiteness of the nightingale's song to the silence of the night ; but 

 if so, what are we to think of the bird which, in the open ghire of day, 

 overpowers and often silences all competition ? His natural notes partake 

 of a character similar to those of the brown thrush, but they are more sweet, 

 more expressive, more varied, and uttered with greater rapidity. 



The Yellow-breasted Chat naturally follows his superior in the art of 

 mimicry. When his haunt is approached, he scolds the passenger in a great 

 variety of odd and uncouth monosyllables, difficult to describe, but easily 

 imitated so as to deceive the bird himself, and draw him after you to a good 

 distance ; in such cases his responses are constant and rapid, strongly ex- 

 pressive of anxiety and anger, and while the bird is always unseen, the 

 voice shifts from place to place among the biLshes, as if proceeding from a 

 spirit. At first are heard short notes like the whistling of a duck's wings, 

 beginning loud and rapid, and becoming lower .and slower, till they end in 

 detached notes. There succeeds something like the b;u-king of young pup- 

 pies, followed by a variety of guttural sounds, like those of some qup.dru. 

 peds, and ending like the mewing of a cat, but much hoar.'^er. All those are 

 given with much vehemence, and in different keys, so as to appear some- 

 times at a great distance, and instantly again quite near yoiL In mild serene 

 moonlight nights, it continues tliis ventriloquism all night, responding to iU 

 own echoes. 



The song of the Baltimore Oriole is little less remarkable than his fino 

 appearance, and the ingenuity with which he builds his nest. His uote.i 



