ii6 The Ottawa Naturalist. [September 



ORNITHOLOGY. 



Notes on Ottawa Birds. 



In publishing " Notes on Ottawa Birds," we hope to interest 

 the young in the study of our birds and to assist the older 

 m:iinbcrs of the Field'-Naturalists' Club, who hav-e not made a 

 Si^ccial study of birds, to identify the various species when 

 the)' are seen and heard. The distinguishing characteristics, the 

 song, the nesting, and the habits of our birds will be prominent 

 in these notes, which, with other interesting facts regarding them, 



will, we trust, make profitable reading. 



W. T. Macoun. 

 Associate Editor Ornithology. 



The Thrushes. — To one familiar with the magnificent 

 songs, the "argent utterances," of our native thrushes, any plain 

 descri{-)tion of them must seem entirely inadequate, and the pen 

 of a ])oe!t should be employed, and has been, many times, 

 in telling of these most poetic of all our Canadian forest voices, 

 The different members of the thrush family speak one 

 language it is true,but it is not difficult to distinguish their songs 

 one trom another. While thatof theveery,which,by-the-way,is not 

 unlike "veer-y veer-y, veer-y," maybe compared to three or four 

 rippling waves in a rapid falling gradually downwards, that of 

 the olive-back is a cascade falling upwards, if one may speak of 

 such a thing, and the hermit's song also rises from the 

 first note ; but the hermit begins with one clear note, followed 

 as a rule by a brief pause, which emphasizes it ; at any rate 

 without the impetuous frothy upward rush of the beginning of 

 the oliveback's song, and the hermit's ts a clearer utterance all 

 through more nearly reducible to musical notation. The song 

 of the wood thrush is not likely to be confused with the oKher three ; 

 it is more self-asserting and less meditative, and the notes ring 

 with a bell-like quality which the others hardly possess ; then, 

 when one is near by, a faint cluck can always be heard im- 



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