WILS0N*S THRUSI^ 15 



of the melody to any person who has not heard the bird sing it. 

 As a rule the attempts that have been made to represent the wood- 

 land songs by words have been failures, though in a few efforts we 

 have been somewhat successful. In the whistle of the titmouse we 

 get a slight — a very slight — resemblance to chick-a-dee-dee-dee, and 

 the singer of "old Tom Peabody" has been recognized by his song. 

 It is true also that many an observer by using these artifices has 

 assisted his memory to recall an unfamiliar melody, but he cannot con- 

 vey it to another through these mediums. It is as conveyances that 

 these phrases and syllables are failures, and the nature of the things 

 to be conveyed makes success impossible. These melodies are too 

 subtle and elusive to be wrapped in a phrase and passed on to one's 

 neighbor. You can no more put a bird's song into words than you 

 can put the wild whistle of the wind, or the whispered reveries of a 

 purling stream. 



Another question of common debate is the comparative merits of 

 bird songs, and these must remain in dispute until some genius 

 arranges a standard by which the excellence of these songs shall be 

 judged. In the meantime people will diflfer in their judgments of our 

 songsters, each man being influenced probably in favor of the birds 

 with whose performance he is most familiar, or with which he has 

 had most favorable associations. It is not surprising, therefore, to 

 find many writers praising the wood thrush as the best singer of 

 our thrushes, while others give precedence to the hermit, and I 

 know one ardent bird lover who thinks the veery sings much the 

 finest song. 



The voice of the veery is exceeding clear and sweet. It is of liquid 

 quality yet with a metallic timbre, a tiny silver horn of high pitch, 

 resembling nothing else so much as it does the sound produced by 

 whistling into an empty gun barrel. You may hear the voice 

 during the warmer parts of the day more frequently than you hear 

 that of other thrushes, for the singer haunts the most thickly 

 shaded ravines, or damp dells into which the sunshine rarely 

 enters. In these retreats there is little difference between mid-day 

 and morning, so when hidden there the veery sings on while the 

 birds who have spent the morning in the sunshine take their mid- 

 day rest. It is probable that the veery's fondness for this retire- 

 ment is largely responsible for the current notion that all these 



