34 BIRD-SONGS ABOUT WORCESTER. 



in Worcester, almost within the city limits, 

 I heard his song blending with the music 

 of our own familiar sparrows. I have for- 

 borne to mention in these letters the fox- 

 colored sparrows, the winter wrens, the 

 kinglets, the white-crowned sparrows, and 

 other birds of the far North, many of 

 whom are most accomplished songsters, 

 but whose stay with us in the spring, 

 during their migrations, is so brief that 

 their music attracts little notice. But the 

 peabody bird has a claim on me which I 

 may not and would not dispute, that of 

 an old friend whose melody I knew and 

 loved long before I took any special inter- 

 est in bird-songs, and who is inseparably 

 associated in my mind with sweet-scented 

 primeval forests, with wild mountain trout- 

 streams, and the weird screaming of 

 the loon. The song of the peabody 

 bird begins with a long, clear, wavering 

 whistle, followed by two or three bars, 

 peabody, peabody, peabody, of almost un- 

 equalled sweetness. John Burroughs, who 

 had heard the bird in the Adirondacks, 



