294 Bird - Lore 



work singing "Happy as the day is long," is a man who finds something in 

 that work besides a hard task, and who gets something out of it besides fatigue 

 and discouragement. He works and plays at the same time. 



This same beautiful lesson is taught us by the birds. With them, song is 

 an expression of health and energy, and of a natural instinct linked with the 

 great law of life which we touched upon in the last exercise. The period of 

 song is at its best when mates are chosen and nesting is begun, but song is 

 also an accompaniment to food-getting, with many species. Watch the Vireos 

 feeding and singing, throughout the long, sultry summer, or listen for the 

 Nighthawk sweeping the twilight-gloom, calling its strange, rasping note. 



Hear the frequent repetitions of the Maryland Yellowthroat's song, as the 

 busy singer slips about shrubbery by roadside or brook; the bubbling phrases 

 of the Bobolink, as it rises for a moment from the grassy meadows, or the 

 faint tzee of the secretive Savannah Sparrow from the mow-fields. If you 

 are so fortunate as to be in the North at this season, you cannot fail to hear the 

 silvery pipe of the White-throated Sparrow, now here, now there, all the day, 

 or a strain from the harp of the Hermit Thrush in the evergreen woodland; 

 although these occasional snatches are but a suggestion of the wonderful 

 matin and vesper choruses of these famous singers. 



The 'flycatcher clan' sing often as they feed, some more than others, and 

 notably the indefatigable Chebec, while the dancing, flashing Goldfinch wings 

 its way on a path of song. From every side comes some sound of cheer, some 

 reminder of the jubilance of life. Train not only your eyes but your ears to 

 observe, for strange to say, we hear ordinarily only a fraction of the songs of 

 birds, insects, frogs, leaves, winds, and ocean, while we see oh! so little of the 

 shifting symphonies of color and form on Nature's canvas. We live in a world 

 of sound, of vibrant life, and we should be attuned to it. 



The period of song with birds is different with different species, but we 

 may distinguish some points of resemblance which hold good for all with 

 regard to the exercise of the gift of song. But, first, we should notice that all 

 birds cannot sing equally well. The song-mechanism of a bird is in the lower 

 part of the throat or larynx and is called the syrinx. This mechanism is com- 

 plicated and difficult to explain, but it consists in part of a membrane held 

 tautly in place and delicately adjusted by various sets of muscles. 



In certain birds the song-mechanism is very simple, almost rudimentary, 

 and such an instrument can produce only hoarse or raucous call-notes, capable 

 of hardly, if any, modulation. The Ostrich, Emu and Cassowary are exam- 

 ples of species that lack much of the mechanism of song. All water and shore- 

 birds, gallinaceous birds. Doves and Pigeons, birds of prey, the Woodpeckers, 

 Cuckoos, Kingfishers and Whip-poor-wills, Swifts, and Hummingbirds have 

 poorly developed singing instruments, and so we find that of our birds, true 

 song belongs only to the perching species, and even among these there is a great 

 diversity in the development of the syrinx. 



