Bobolink SONG-BIRDS. 



making his last appearance as an article of food, heralded 

 011 the restaurant bill of fare thus : " Reed-birds, four on a 

 skewer, 50 cents." 



Strange to say that two-thirds of the gunners who do the 

 shooting deny that the birds are identical and that they are 

 killing so much latent music. "The brown birds are all 

 females," they say, " which, being greatly in excess of the 

 males, remain after the latter have disappeared." I would 

 advise all such incredulous ones to buy The Auk (an intel- 

 ligible ornithological quarterly) for October, 1893, where 

 they will find a paper on this subject by Mr. Frank M. 

 Chapman, and a coloured plate showing the Bobolink life- 

 sized, in the spring transition, when he is again moulting 

 the stripes for the breeding-coat. 



Of all our songsters none enter into the literature of fact 

 and fancy more fully than the Bobolink, and none so exhila- 

 rates us by his song. Sit upon the fence of an upland 

 meadow any time from early May until the last of June, 

 watch and listen. Up from the grass the Bobolinks fly, 

 some singing and dropping again, others rising Lark-like 

 until the distant notes sound like the tinkling of an 

 ancient clavichord. Then, while you are gazing 'skyward, 

 from the choke-cherry tree above your head will come the 

 hurried syllables in which Mr. Burroughs interprets the 

 song : " Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! I must have my fun, Miss Silver- 

 thimble, if I break every heart in the meadow, see, see, see ! " 

 Meanwhile, the grass is full of nests and brown mothers, 

 neither of which you see, for you are wholly entranced by 

 the song. 



Bryant's poem on Robert of Lincoln contains a good 

 description of the bird's plumage, but is too precise and 

 measured to express the rapture of the song. It may de- 

 scribe a stuffed Bobolink, but never a wild, living one. Wil- 

 son Flagg's verses on The O'Lincon Family, one of which 

 I quote, are in truer key : 



" Every one's a funny fellow ; every one's a little mellow ; 

 Follow, follow, follow, follow, o'er the hill and in the hollow. 

 Merrily, merrily, there they hie ; now they rise and now they fly ; 



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