66 



L'HK OOLrOaiSl'. 



their song; though no combiQatiou of 

 letter:? can evea suggest to ooe the pos- 

 sible beauty of the soug of this wood- 

 land artist. At the same time a coni- 

 pauy of Blue-gray Guatcatchers begia 

 their conversation of '■'spah-spah.'" as 

 they move from twig to twig. A mo- 

 ment hiter a Whip-poor-will begins 

 singiug in some brushwood across the 

 creek, not mora than twenty feet dis- 

 tant. Turn the opera glasses over there 

 if you will boys; even if it is light 

 enough to see the log clearly you won't 

 see him. You don't? i thought so. 

 While he is singing we hear the ham 

 of beetles winging their way through 

 the branches, in the twilight; and the 

 trees, whose tops are wet with the fogs 

 of the morning, begin dropping the 

 distilled moisture upon the dry leaves 

 beneath. Soon after the Whip-poor- 

 will leaves and we hear the broken 

 but loud warble of the Red-eyed Vireo 

 and the rich whistles of the Redbinl as 

 additions to the now loud chorus of 

 Chats, Wood Thrushes aad Whip-poor- 

 wills. The hitter are still singing, 

 though in not so great numbers as a 

 quarter of an hour before. 



We will leave the stump and take a 

 lij'iiig leap over the brook, landing on 

 a masi ot aromatic ferns and clamber 

 , up the hill H^re wi are on a high 

 and somewhai; level point, on which 

 the grou^tli of underbrush is not so 

 heavy. Here are a number of Red- 

 starts, all males, in the tops of the tu- 

 lip trees, moving from twig to twig, 

 antl often altering their whistling soug, 

 '■quee quee quee queepP" On an open 

 point of the hilltop we hear aloud, 

 -whistling note, the tone of which re- 

 minds me of the song of the Rose- 

 breasted Grosbeak, but I'm not sure 

 and the bird does not favor us with a 

 view. In the top of a tall tree near by 

 is a Warbler singing -'wheewhee whee 

 ichee Mr w/iec." I don't recognize him. 

 Do you? Hold on! Hear that down in 

 the thicket, there? A sharp '-chip,'' 

 followed l)y -'chip, zree-e-e-e' in loud, 



sprightly tones. I'm downright sorry 

 you can't tell me what that is, for I 

 heard it for the first time two years ago 

 a mile south of here. I got a glimpse 

 of the bird in a grape-vine thicket, shot 

 at him, missed, and he's been a "miss" 

 tery ever since. Then I heard several 

 right here last year and never got a- 

 glimpse of one. Let's try it again now. 

 Pshaw, he has quit singing already,' 

 and that thicket is so dense we will 

 have to wait till he begins again. There 

 is the song again a hundred yards be- 

 hind us, but before we have gone half 

 that distance it has ceased again. We 

 had better go back to the point of the 

 hill again. 



Standing here, where we can see 

 over all the surrounding woodland, we 

 see, over a hundred feet below, the 

 creek valley, covered with a dense car- 

 pet of blue grass, and diversified wich 

 clumps of osage orange round masses 

 of hawthorn and patches of young syc- 

 amores; while along the bend of the 

 creek are many old sycamores, whose 

 massive white limbs appear like marble 

 against the dark backgroimd. The sua 

 has not yet risen, bu.tit is light enough 

 to see everything distinctly. A horizon 

 of birdsoug extends around us, an ap- 

 parently confused conglomeration of 

 indistinguishable sounds, but after list- 

 ening a few moments one singer after 

 another is picked out, until we '-au 

 recognize the songs of all birds pre- 

 viously mentioned, and in addition, the 

 Kentucky Warbler, the Maryland Yel- 

 low throat, the Blue-winged Yellow 

 Warbler, the Cuckoo, Tufted Tit, Blue 

 Jay and Crow. A moment later sever- 

 al loud rich notes, foliowad by '■cMp- 

 ■ urr, chijJ-iirr,''' comes from a nearby 

 poplar, and a Scarlet Tauager Hies to a 

 large elm, the same one in which the 

 Warbler was heard singing some time 

 before. He is there yet, by the way, 

 and is singing the same soug. Hello! 

 it's a Blue-winged Yellow Warbler, 

 but that's a new soug. Now he has 

 changed it, it is "ivhee-whay-clmr-cluir- 



